Why do people leave the Catholic Church?

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wisdomseeker said:
over all my opinion is that is due to so many opposition to the CC. many Catholics were never educated in their faith, so when they heard things against the Church such as chick tracks, many simply believed and left the Church and that is why we see so many speaking against the CC. this is to me the main reason. specially after VII council, when Catholics were never prepared for what was to come. :highprayer: :byzsoc:
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Exactly right. Poor catechesis is certainly to blame. How could anyone leave, if they truly understood that Jesus is present in the Eucharist? This would be like someone in the crowd of 4,000 with Jesus leaving him because others in the crowd were unacceptable to them. They completely lost sight of the very reason that they were there.

Poorly catechized Catholics often drift away out of a lack of faith, or are enticed away by other churches that are more exciting and have virtually no requirements as far as observing the faith. Also, many in our age have what is described as a “favorite sin” which the Catholic Church teaches against. It is easier to find another congregation which allows it.

Other churches gather lukewarm Catholics. The Catholic Church gains fervent, truth-seeking members from other churches. Their conversion stories are inspirational.
 
po18guy said:
Exactly right. Poor catechesis is certainly to blame. How could anyone leave, if they truly understood that Jesus is present in the Eucharist? This would be like someone in the crowd of 4,000 with Jesus leaving him because others in the crowd were unacceptable to them. They completely lost sight of the very reason that they were there.

Poorly catechized Catholics often drift away out of a lack of faith, or are enticed away by other churches that are more exciting and have virtually no requirements as far as observing the faith. Also, many in our age have what is described as a “favorite sin” which the Catholic Church teaches against. It is easier to find another congregation which allows it.

Other churches gather lukewarm Catholics. The Catholic Church gains fervent, truth-seeking members from other churches. Their conversion stories are inspirational.
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👍 👍
 
JustHuman said:
I left the Catholic Church because (over time), I came to conclude that there was no compelling evidence for a personal God, survival after death, or the historical credibility of the gospels, etc. I think it’s a bit unfair to suggest people only leave this religion because their lifestyle conflicts with doctrine.
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You are on a journey, along with the rest of us. Your life is not finished, just as our are not. Many of us have had similar periods in our own lives. Please do not rule out a return to the faith, as the Lord often reveals Himself to those of little or no faith in most unusual times and under unusual circumstances.
 
Thank you for the good wishes po18guy,

I want to point out that people don’t leave Catholicism simply because they lack the knowledge, or are forbidden to “do their favorite sin” as someone above pointed out. Quite honestly, I think it’s very difficult for any of us to acknowledge that someone can fully understand our worldview, yet reject it because it doesn’t make sense to them. I see the same sort of behavior from atheists who see someone from their ranks convert to an Abrahamic religion. We non-religious would often suggest that they were never truly atheistic, not sufficiently knowledgeable about science, did their conversion out of fear, or to fit in with the social norms.

As I said before, if you’re a convert to Catholicism, you already know the reason for which some people leave this religion… it no longer seems true to them. It’s usually as simple as that 🙂
 
WRHuff said:
Maybe my experience will enlighten some.
Just plain laziness.
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Hi WRHuff,

Would you care to enlarge since you’ve listed your religion as Catholic? I don’t know if you’re owning up to the fact that you left the Catholic Church because you were too lazy to practice your faith but have since returned or if you’re declaring that it’s been your experience that people generally fall away from the Church because of their laziness.

If it’s the former you’re very honest and if it’s the latter I’d be interested in hearing a few details about the lazy people.

Weclome to Catholic Answers Forums, by the way.

Curiously,
Mick
👍
 
SSTeacher said:
Hi WRHuff,

Would you care to enlarge since you’ve listed your religion as Catholic? I don’t know if you’re owning up to the fact that you left the Catholic Church because you were too lazy to practice your faith but have since returned or if you’re declaring that it’s been your experience that people generally fall away from the Church because of their laziness.

If it’s the former you’re very honest and if it’s the latter I’d be interested in hearing a few details about the lazy people.

Weclome to Catholic Answers Forums, by the way.

Curiously,
Mick
👍
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It is the former. When I was young, many years ago, I began a study of the Catholic church, because the young lady I planned to marry was Catholic. I was a college student at the time, so the study fit well with my studies. After much reading, I became convinced that I, too, should become Catholic. I studied the Catechism under a priest, who later baptized me, I had 1st Penance, 1st Communion, etc., and became a practicing Catholic. Shortly the young lady and I were married. I graduated, went to work, and pretty soon the kids came. Meanwhile, we continued to practice our faith, and took our kids with us to church. After a while, other activities (golf, fishing, and so forth) began to interfere with church, so I gradually found excuses not to go. And it got increasingly difficult to get the kids to church. Once we learned how expensive Parochial School was, and not realizing (or not wanting to investigate) the alternatives, we just dropped out. Basically too lazy to continue our active church life.forums.catholic-questions.org/images/smilies/frown.gif
Kids grew up, went off to do their own things. Wife got sick, and passed away. I was hit on the head with a sledgehammer! Found a priest to administer Last Rites and another to preside over her services (no burial Mass, of course!) but old teachings started to come back to me. After a period I began to re-acquaint myself with the Faith, found a very understanding priest, and “'fessed up”. Since then I’ve been a regular church-goer, involved in bible study groups, etc., and would like to do some evangelical or ministerial activities of some kind.
 
Many Many reasons, but I think the number one reason is the Church does not want to do what they want. Today society do not want to be told the truth, they do not want to live by the law of Christ. So they find a Church that tells them what they want to hear, not what they need to hear.🤷
 
WRHuff said:
It is the former. When I was young, many years ago, I began a study of the Catholic church, because the young lady I planned to marry was Catholic. I was a college student at the time, so the study fit well with my studies. After much reading, I became convinced that I, too, should become Catholic. I studied the Catechism under a priest, who later baptized me, I had 1st Penance, 1st Communion, etc., and became a practicing Catholic. Shortly the young lady and I were married. I graduated, went to work, and pretty soon the kids came. Meanwhile, we continued to practice our faith, and took our kids with us to church. After a while, other activities (golf, fishing, and so forth) began to interfere with church, so I gradually found excuses not to go. And it got increasingly difficult to get the kids to church. Once we learned how expensive Parochial School was, and not realizing (or not wanting to investigate) the alternatives, we just dropped out. Basically too lazy to continue our active church life.forums.catholic-questions.org/images/smilies/frown.gif
Kids grew up, went off to do their own things. Wife got sick, and passed away. I was hit on the head with a sledgehammer! Found a priest to administer Last Rites and another to preside over her services (no burial Mass, of course!) but old teachings started to come back to me. After a period I began to re-acquaint myself with the Faith, found a very understanding priest, and “'fessed up”. Since then I’ve been a regular church-goer, involved in bible study groups, etc., and would like to do some evangelical or ministerial activities of some kind.
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Thank you for explaining. May God bless you in all your endeavors.

Grace and peace,
Mick
👍
 
WRHuff said:
It is the former. When I was young, many years ago, I began a study of the Catholic church, because the young lady I planned to marry was Catholic. I was a college student at the time, so the study fit well with my studies. After much reading, I became convinced that I, too, should become Catholic. I studied the Catechism under a priest, who later baptized me, I had 1st Penance, 1st Communion, etc., and became a practicing Catholic. Shortly the young lady and I were married. I graduated, went to work, and pretty soon the kids came. Meanwhile, we continued to practice our faith, and took our kids with us to church. After a while, other activities (golf, fishing, and so forth) began to interfere with church, so I gradually found excuses not to go. And it got increasingly difficult to get the kids to church. Once we learned how expensive Parochial School was, and not realizing (or not wanting to investigate) the alternatives, we just dropped out. Basically too lazy to continue our active church life.forums.catholic-questions.org/images/smilies/frown.gif
Kids grew up, went off to do their own things. Wife got sick, and passed away. I was hit on the head with a sledgehammer! Found a priest to administer Last Rites and another to preside over her services (no burial Mass, of course!) but old teachings started to come back to me. After a period I began to re-acquaint myself with the Faith, found a very understanding priest, and “'fessed up”. Since then I’ve been a regular church-goer, involved in bible study groups, etc., and would like to do some evangelical or ministerial activities of some kind.
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You sure have the life credits. WHAT a story. God love ya.
 
I think as many have said that there are as many reasons as there are people.

I left for the following reasons:
  1. I could not justify the Church’s handling of the child abuse issue and it never seems to end. There are constantly new revelations, which suggests the Church is still trying to hide from the issue.
  2. I disagreed doctrinarily on the issue of women’s ordination, and homosexuality. I find neither dogmas persuasive and I think they are in opposition to good biblical exegesis and other historical evidence.
  3. I don’t agree with the church on contraception. This issue never touched me personally. Nor did #2.
  4. I found out well after the fact that my marriage was considered non-sacramental, and could not be corrected except by my husband getting an annulment. He was not Catholic and not married to a Catholic, so I feel the church has no place in this. The church in effect walked away from me.
  5. I might still have remained but for a friend who told me of their parish changing priests and that all they had been taught and so forth was now considered wrong by the ultra conservative priest who was sent as replacement. I thought investing my time and energy only to be “uncovered” not worth it. And the hypocrisy of remaining began to gnaw at me. I fully respect a number of liberal Catholics who remain and fight the good fight to change the church from within, but i had not the strength for that fight myself.
    6. Most of the ex-Catholics I know left for doctrinal reasons, but usually not because they wanted to do something the church said they couldn’t. As most know, most catholics do as they wish anyway. Check out th numbers who use contraception for instance.
    7. Being a liberal catholic is hard. Being a conservative Catholic is easy–you just have to ask what the church tells you to believe. I got tired of fighting, even though in most parishes what goes on here would be shocking to them. The ultra conservative Catholic is a rarety in most parishes from my experience.
  6. I found some place that worked for me intellectually and spiritually and ritually. Perhaps had I not found it, I might not have left.
 
Peter_J said:
Hi Iambic Pen,

That a great list. The only thing I would like to point out is, I think most of those reasons cut both ways.
  • For example, someone might head away from the Catholic Church because they don’t find the mass to be engaging, or they might head towards the Catholic Church because they don’t find their old Protestant service engaging.
  • Someone might be looking for a less-demanding denomination, or they be looking for one that is more-demanding. Similarly, they might be looking for a denomination that more lenient on divorce, or they be looking for one that is stricter on divorce. Similarly with fasting and contraception.
  • Someone might be scandalized by something in Catholicism; someone else might be scandalized by something Protestantism.
  • Someone might meet smart Protestants and become convinced that Catholicism is in error. Someone else might meet smart Catholics and become convinced that Protestantism is in error. (I took the liberty of changing “bible-smart” to “smart”.)
  • Someone might meet Protestants who have a great relationship with the Lord. Someone else might meet Catholics who have a great relationship with the Lord.
etc. Did I miss any?

P.S. I guess I did miss one: Someone might leave Catholicism because a priest or nun was mean to them; someone else might leave Protestantism because another Protestant (a minister or whoever) was mean to them.

Did I miss any others?
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I agree with all of that. It does seem to me, though, that going from Protestantism to Catholicism requires more “work,” than the reverse, and so people are more likely to make a properly informed choice.
 
SpiritMeadow said:
I think as many have said that there are as many reasons as there are people.

I left for the following reasons:
  1. I could not justify the Church’s handling of the child abuse issue and it never seems to end. There are constantly new revelations, which suggests the Church is still trying to hide from the issue.
  2. I disagreed doctrinarily on the issue of women’s ordination, and homosexuality. I find neither dogmas persuasive and I think they are in opposition to good biblical exegesis and other historical evidence.
  3. I don’t agree with the church on contraception. This issue never touched me personally. Nor did #2.
  4. I found out well after the fact that my marriage was considered non-sacramental, and could not be corrected except by my husband getting an annulment. He was not Catholic and not married to a Catholic, so I feel the church has no place in this. The church in effect walked away from me.
  5. I might still have remained but for a friend who told me of their parish changing priests and that all they had been taught and so forth was now considered wrong by the ultra conservative priest who was sent as replacement. I thought investing my time and energy only to be “uncovered” not worth it. And the hypocrisy of remaining began to gnaw at me. I fully respect a number of liberal Catholics who remain and fight the good fight to change the church from within, but i had not the strength for that fight myself.
  6. Most of the ex-Catholics I know left for doctrinal reasons, but usually not because they wanted to do something the church said they couldn’t. As most know, most catholics do as they wish anyway. Check out th numbers who use contraception for instance.
  7. Being a liberal catholic is hard. Being a conservative Catholic is easy–you just have to ask what the church tells you to believe. I got tired of fighting, even though in most parishes what goes on here would be shocking to them. The ultra conservative Catholic is a rarety in most parishes from my experience.
  8. I found some place that worked for me intellectually and spiritually and ritually. Perhaps had I not found it, I might not have left.
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Since you were never in the Church, how could you leave it? In any event, it is a great consolation that you have found a place where you are at peace.
 
po18guy said:
Not that it would be painfully obvious, but do we dare start a thread relating to why people enter the Church? I can almost guess the answer… 👍
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I started that thread a minute before I started this one. I titled it, Why convert to Catholicism from Protestantism? It’s pretty much flopped and that has made me sad.

Pathetically,
Mick
:crying:
 
rinnie said:
Many Many reasons, but I think the number one reason is the Church does not want to do what they want. Today society do not want to be told the truth, they do not want to live by the law of Christ. So they find a Church that tells them what they want to hear, not what they need to hear.🤷
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I think inside their soul somewhere most people do want the truth. Maybe they are like a sheep without a shepherd. I was in the Church awhile, looking for answers, before suddenly I started to find them. I finally heard the right voice clearly enough, I think. I mean, the right voice was there, but I didn’t hear it well through the noise before. Maybe they aren’t hearing it, and leave.

I know we can blind our conscience so we don’t hear too well, so it can be due to previous faults of ours that we don’t hear. But at least during a certain period, it was hard to ferret the real story out by yourself. So many (Catholic) people told you the wrong thing.
 
mercygate said:
Since you were never in the Church, how could you leave it? In any event, it is a great consolation that you have found a place where you are at peace.
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I assume this is some perverse attempt on your part to be rude? If not I am missing your point completely. I was in the RCC for many years, and had in fact been accepted into the Dominican order at one point. Did you misunderstand something?
 
SpiritMeadow said:
mercygate;4841394:
Since you were never in the Church, how could you leave it? In any event, it is a great consolation that you have found a place where you are at peace.
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I assume this is some perverse attempt on your part to be rude?
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That seems like a bit of an exaggeration, but I did find mercygate’s statement to be odd and a little presumptuous.

BTW, SpiritMeadow, I liked your post but #5 struck me as strange, since I think this sort of thing is as common (or more common) in Protestantism than it is in Catholicism:
SpiritMeadow said:
  1. I might still have remained but for a friend who told me of their parish changing priests and that all they had been taught and so forth was now considered wrong by the ultra conservative priest who was sent as replacement.
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SSTeacher said:
Do you think people generally leave Catholicism for reasons of conscience or simply because they aren’t much interested in spiritual matters of any kind?

Curiously,
Mick
👍
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Mick,

I have read through all the posts, or at least the majority of them in this thread… And as many posters have said…there are many reasons.

I am a “revert”…and here is why I left:

I was 17, I was a soldier in Basic Combat Training at Fort Benning in the fall of 1967. I would be turning 18 soon after receiving my advanced training, and I knew without much doubt that I would receive orders for Viet Nam as had 123 of the 127 of the troops in my company. 123 men already knew that they were going to Viet Nam…most as infantrymen (11B10’s). I was different…too young to go, and I had enlisted for a special school.

But when I was in basic…just before graduation…all of us Catholics were called out of formation for a meeting with a Catholic Chaplain…a rather young fellow, who gave us a “pep” talk…and the summary of that talk was: You are going to have to kill the enemy, but its OK, because God is on our side!

Now, having been raised as a Catholic, in the family of an Army Officer, a Veteran of two wars and a Ranger…I was still brought up to believe God’s Word and that violence and killing was not always the answer, in fact that it seldom was, and that only in a “just war” is it allowable. So even though I joined the Army, I had some moral qualms about killing, many in fact, I knew that I could not be a CO, … But the fact that a Catholic Priest told me that “God was on our side”!…caused me even greater problems because I knew that the demographics of Viet Nam contained a rather sizable number of Catholics and some other Christians…so I knew further that I took much risk in killing a fellow Catholic or Christian who had been “impressed” into the service of the VC or even NVA…under dire threats of death to him or her and their family…which was a real problem.

God did not inform the US that He was on their side, and I considered the statement more than ambiguous.

While I fell away from attendance at Mass and had little or nothing to do with religion at all for some years, I still did my duty according to the oath that I took, and served two and a half tours in Viet Nam… But in all that time… I never gave up my core values, and I held to my faith…I guess I just went on a hiatus.

After I came back to the world, I continued my hiatus, though I had been invited to weddings and such at other churches which I attended…and was invited to join other churches, I never did. Why? I never felt “comfortable” in them despite the friendliness of the people, though on few occasions I had been asked what “religion” I was…and when I mentioned the word “Catholic” there were a few people who treated me like a “leper”. Not that it bothered me…it really didn’t…

But… I eventually returned to the Church a number of years ago, once I had reconciled a few of my issues…and it is in the Catholic Church that I belong and will stay.

My point is that we as “mankind” have many different reasons for the things that we do…some of theological or spiritual differences, and perhaps some like me out of a temporary dis-allusion. Remember…I was 17, and not yet grown up…but yet I took an oath to obey orders, defend my Constitution and Nation…and that included killing my fellow man on the field of battle…

I can only hope, and pray, that others who have fallen away will find the path back to the Church as I did…though I know it was not my doing alone…The Holy Spirit led me, and my wife, a good Catholic woman…reinforced the message:)
 
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