Why has Mass attendance declined?

[otjm]

The opinions herein are interesting, except for the fact that they completely miss something.

If changes in the Mass - one person referred to a dumbing down of the Liturgy - have anything to do with it, then why is it the the Catholic Church through this period of change actually is doing better than all of the mainline Protestant churches? They are the ones who have suffered the greatest loss of membership attendance, and they as a whole do not have what could be called high liturgy?

In fact in England, which has been less than enthusiastically accepting of the Catholic Church since Henry 8th, there are more Catholics attending Mass on a regular basis than Anglicans, which is the State Church.

Thoughout Europe, the Catholic Church is suffering much lower attendance than in the US; at best, the US is double the attendance rate, and at worst, the US is about 6 time the attendance rate (Europe is in the range of 15% to 5% attendance on a weekly basis; the US is about 30 -35%).

The three biggest causes appear to be secularism (the minimalization of Church’s influence in the everyday life of individuals), materialism, and the breakdown from extended families to nuclear families, to now single parent familites.

Poland, which went through the upheaval of coming out from under the dominance of Communism and the USSR, is already showing signs of a slacking off of attendance; although they are still light years ahead of the rest of Europe, the single most repeated and pronounced cause appears to be the free market economy which replaced the controlled economic model of Communism; and that in short spells materialism. In just about any period of history, the Church supressed has appeared more vibrant than the Church when not supressed.

Further, relating the decline in attendance to the normative Liturgy ignores the fact that attendance and Church growth is almost explosive in Africa, and the greatest number of ordinations per capita is there; if attendanced drop were due to the “dumbed down” liturgy, then this flies in the face of that cause. Again, Africa is not exactly a model of free economic theory and is not in large part suffering from materialism or secularism.

 

[edwest2]

The primary reason has been the ongoing campaign to destroy the family. And to trivialize the sacredness of marriage and sexual relations. It was a very gradual process. In fact, it took about 30 years.

Early 1960s. Bikini. “The Pill.”
1968. Hippies, Radicals, and Anarchists demand abandonment of all that came before, setting the stage for “Free Love” (sex with anyone, with or without marriage).
1973. Abortion legalized. Mandatory sex education even in Catholic shools.
1978. The National Organization of Women, a radical, secular group, tells women to fight their “oppressors,” which means the men in their lives. Adult Bookstores proliferate. No-fault divorce is spreading from California east.
1980s. Porn on cable. No-Fault Divorce completes its trip across the country. It is difficult for one parent to stay home to help raise the kids because it costs more money to live in a “good” neighborhood.
1990s. Full decline. It’s no longer possible to tell a Christian from a secular person. Divorce rates are about even. Television decides it needs profanity and partial nudity. A character named Murphy Brown has a baby out of wedlock.
2000s. A group of people whose only job is to criticize, belittle, insult and trivialize everything and everybody (except strippers and hookers) are dubbed “shock jocks.”

This poisoned dripped into the Body of Christ very gradually over the last 30 years and now we are seeing the fruit of it. Originally, abortion was ‘use in case of emergency only,’ now it’s abortion on demand. Originally, divorce was ‘use in case of emergency only,’ then it was No-Fault Divorce.

Christian compassion was taken advantage of. “Please, have mercy on us. Allow us to have abortion and no-fault divorce and a whole bunch of other things. Please.” Now those things are trivialized. Abortion? No big deal. Divorce? No big deal. Shacking up? No big deal.

Wake up my brothers and sisters in Christ. The Church I go to is a Church. I’m not concerned about Latin or non-Latin, about Vatican II, or the priest facing forward. I’m there to worship God, to pray to God, to be with God. I’m not there because I think I have to be but because I want to be. And God has to be part of our lives seven days a week.

Seven days a week.

God bless,
Ed

 

[KofC660]

Above are two very insightful posts giving two different reasons Mass attendance is declining that I believe we could all agree are related.

 

[quiet52]

VAC:
Not only does modern society not have a sense of “sin” but Sunday is no longer considered as the most important day of the week. Kids’ sports team have practice now on Sunday mornings. Kids aren’t brought to church on Sundays during pre-Christmas shopping season because they are shopping days. Mass isn’t “entertaining” enough – we’re used to laugh tracks from television and edge-of-seat movie drama, without putting forth any effort ourselves. So many parents are poorly catechized and don’t pass on the teachings of the faith to their children. We’re used to instant gratification of the senses. Being “holy” is too risky – we don’t want to be sneered at. Forgive me for generalizing … of course I know these words don’t pertain to a great many people, who work so hard being faithful disciples of Christ rather than of culture.

We can only keep working on our own journeys of faith, model the values that Jesus wants us to live, and invite others to journey with us.

 

[Cat]

“And God has to be part of our lives seven days a week.”

edwest2, this is an EXCELLENT comment, and IMO, is probably the main reason why people don’t attend Mass or other worship services.

If I may make a comparison to a marriage, a couple that doesn’t talk, doesn’t eat together, doesn’t see each other much, doesn’t share expenses or plan family events or travel or participate in hobbies together–this couple is not likely to have a passionate hour in bed at the end of the week!

And that’s the way it is with God. If we haven’t spoken with Him all week, haven’t consulted Him, haven’t thanked Him, haven’t had dinner with Him, haven’t done anything with Him or for Him, haven’t even whispered once, “I love You, Lord,” then why would we be interested in spending an intense hour with Jesus at the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass?

One of the priests in one of my parishes made a comment: “If you say you love God and can’t even spend a few minutes a day in prayer, then you don’t love God.” That comment really convicted me of my own laziness and hypocrisy, and now I try to spend time every day with the Lord in prayer. The Rosary is ideal–only 20 minutes or so and it keeps me connected with My Lord and all the rest of the Church Triumphant.

 

[stbruno]

I totally agree about sports teams scheduling games or practices on Sunday…even Catholic schools do that.

Makes life difficult even recruiting kids to become altar servers, when years ago, it was an elite bunch of boys who had to almost try out for the position to be accepted.

One other thought…modern churches have lost their sense of awesomeness…The gothic cathedrals with stained glass windows, statues, icons etc are missing…maybe there are still still that still maintain them, but the feeling that draws you into the sacredness of the place seems to be missing in many places. The only thing I wish our church would add, we have the beautiful statues, shrines, windows…we need cushions on our hard rigid pews.

 

[Aramis]

I’ve no problem with practice on sundays… provided it is AFTER MASS. How better for a Catholic school to build team spirit than sharing the Word of God?

 

[stbruno]

Problem is…in most cases it is during mass time. And when you suggest going on a Sat. vigil mass, we draw blank stares, because they have other activities which supercede any desire to attend mass.

 

[Eddy]

I have a large group of Protestant and Catholic friends in their 20s and 30s. Among the Catholics (all of whom went to Catholic schools) about 30% regularly attend mass.

There reasons for not going vary. One works a six day week, and visits elderly parents on the 7th. Several are extremely disillusioned with the church, but still pray daily. One walked out when a priest frequently preached about how young people are ‘godless’. One couple left after the sex abuse cases came very close to home, and they couldn’t get anyone witihin the church to listen to them.

What I do hear from them is a very real spiritual longing, a deep social commitment, and, actually, a real love for Jesus. Most of them live very ‘moral’ lives. But they’re of a generation which wants to be involved and be listened to, and that believes in consensus building. They’re almost univerally extremely well educated - to Masters level and beyond - and need arguments to hold intellectual water. They will not accept something simply because ‘the church says so’. They’ve also come to the point of saying God/Jesus does not equal Catholic Church, and struggle with the idea of a church where ‘you toe the party line or vote with your feet’.

Among my Protestant friends, almost all still attend church regularly (I’m not claiming this is representative - it’s just those I’ve come into contact with). I think it’s partly down to attempts to build community among young people (the younger generation can be placeless, and need a place to belong). I think it’s also partly down to the willingness of pastors and ministers to debate and engage with difficult questions with their congregations. There’s more acceptance of diversity of thinking and an encouragement to engage intellectually. Sometimes the CC can give the impression of saying ‘if you’re not in 100% agreement with everything, then you’re not welcome’, while the Protestant churches can be better at saying ‘you’re welcome among us, while you try to engage with the questions’. Interestingly many of them are seeking something that feeds them spiritually.

So yes, I think part of it is that many young Catholics feel they aren’t engaged intellectually, and many young Protestants feel they aren’t given the opportunity to engage spiritually.

 

[ComputerGeek25]

I have a large group of Protestant and Catholic friends in their 20s and 30s. Among the Catholics (all of whom went to Catholic schools) about 30% regularly attend mass.

There reasons for not going vary. One works a six day week, and visits elderly parents on the 7th. Several are extremely disillusioned with the church, but still pray daily. One walked out when a priest frequently preached about how young people are ‘godless’. One couple left after the sex abuse cases came very close to home, and they couldn’t get anyone witihin the church to listen to them.

What I do hear from them is a very real spiritual longing, a deep social commitment, and, actually, a real love for Jesus. Most of them live very ‘moral’ lives. But they’re of a generation which wants to be involved and be listened to, and that believes in consensus building. They’re almost univerally extremely well educated - to Masters level and beyond - and need arguments to hold intellectual water. They will not accept something simply because ‘the church says so’. They’ve also come to the point of saying God/Jesus does not equal Catholic Church, and struggle with the idea of a church where ‘you toe the party line or vote with your feet’.

Among my Protestant friends, almost all still attend church regularly (I’m not claiming this is representative - it’s just those I’ve come into contact with). I think it’s partly down to attempts to build community among young people (the younger generation can be placeless, and need a place to belong). I think it’s also partly down to the willingness of pastors and ministers to debate and engage with difficult questions with their congregations. There’s more acceptance of diversity of thinking and an encouragement to engage intellectually. Sometimes the CC can give the impression of saying ‘if you’re not in 100% agreement with everything, then you’re not welcome’, while the Protestant churches can be better at saying ‘you’re welcome among us, while you try to engage with the questions’. Interestingly many of them are seeking something that feeds them spiritually.

So yes, I think part of it is that many young Catholics feel they aren’t engaged intellectually, and many young Protestants feel they aren’t given the opportunity to engage spiritually.

Being a young person myself, I agree with all of your post.

 

[THurifer2]

If church attendance among Protestants is also down, then I don’t think you can chalk it up to changes in the Catholic liturgy over the past 40 years.

The holy sacrifice of the Mass has supernatural effect on the whole world.

 

[palmas85]

The opinions herein are interesting, except for the fact that they completely miss something.

If changes in the Mass - one person referred to a dumbing down of the Liturgy - have anything to do with it, then why is it the the Catholic Church through this period of change actually is doing better than all of the mainline Protestant churches? They are the ones who have suffered the greatest loss of membership attendance, and they as a whole do not have what could be called high liturgy?

In fact in England, which has been less than enthusiastically accepting of the Catholic Church since Henry 8th, there are more Catholics attending Mass on a regular basis than Anglicans, which is the State Church.

Thoughout Europe, the Catholic Church is suffering much lower attendance than in the US; at best, the US is double the attendance rate, and at worst, the US is about 6 time the attendance rate (Europe is in the range of 15% to 5% attendance on a weekly basis; the US is about 30 -35%).

The three biggest causes appear to be secularism (the minimalization of Church’s influence in the everyday life of individuals), materialism, and the breakdown from extended families to nuclear families, to now single parent familites.

Poland, which went through the upheaval of coming out from under the dominance of Communism and the USSR, is already showing signs of a slacking off of attendance; although they are still light years ahead of the rest of Europe, the single most repeated and pronounced cause appears to be the free market economy which replaced the controlled economic model of Communism; and that in short spells materialism. In just about any period of history, the Church supressed has appeared more vibrant than the Church when not supressed.

Further, relating the decline in attendance to the normative Liturgy ignores the fact that attendance and Church growth is almost explosive in Africa, and the greatest number of ordinations per capita is there; if attendanced drop were due to the “dumbed down” liturgy, then this flies in the face of that cause. Again, Africa is not exactly a model of free economic theory and is not in large part suffering from materialism or secularism.

While true the Catholic Church is growing in Africa, it is also at the same time losing members in South America at a much higher rate. Most if not all of those involved are converting to evangelical protestant sects. Ditto for Central America, Mexico and the Philippines, all places where Catholicism has been the dominant force for hundreds of years. By your own numbers Europe by and large is abandoning catholicism and the US while still in a slightly better position isn’t that far behind.

Just because the Church is booming as you say in Africa does not in any way bode well for the future of the institutional church.

I rad a book recently ,“The Diary of an Inner City Priest” A very good book but very sad. In it the author, a Priest in Philadelphia relates his day to day life as Pastor of an inner city Church. He is weary and disillusioned by the practices of the heiarchy of the Church which included the practice of reducing masses in number so that the Masses all seem to be well attended. As he says it it seems all they are interested in is keeping the fiction alive that the church is doing well.

I think that bears paying attention to.

 

[chicago]

I rad a book recently ,“The Diary of an Inner City Priest” A very good book but very sad. In it the author, a Priest in Philadelphia relates his day to day life as Pastor of an inner city Church. He is weary and disillusioned by the practices of the heiarchy of the Church which included the practice of reducing masses in number so that the Masses all seem to be well attended. As he says it it seems all they are interested in is keeping the fiction alive that the church is doing well.

I think that bears paying attention to.

Where can I find this book?

 

[catherine_m]

Oh, I’d have to go with “dumbed-down liturgy” and the departure from traditional Mass.

I agree with this. People don’t know what the Mass is anymore because Priests more often than not don’t tell them. Why go to Mass when you don’t know what it is or what is happening at it.

 

[bankerdavid]

The problem is that the Church has not shifted their views on many things and traditions that need to be thrown out. While Christians are very popular religion wise, the number of true Christians are less than half of all Christians. Very sad…

What views and traditions need to be thrown out? The Vatican does check with the Boss, and what He says, goes.

 

[debraran]

I think this is the book, there is a movie also with the same name:
amazon.com/Diary-City-Priest-John-McNamee/dp/155612662X

I think I will disagree somewhat always with no birth control (in marriage) but I don’t think that is what keeps Catholics away since most use it. I think it’s a disconnection, a lack of feeling wanted and buying into the culture for longer periods of time (instead of just the teen/early 20 years)

I respected John Paul ll though when he said, “I have to meet Jesus alone and I can’t do anything I think he wouldn’t want”.

I am heartened that my church had 15 young and not so young men enter the Dominican house in Wash.DC recently. They said that was the most they have had since 1964 when the numbers started to wane…prayers are being answered.

 

[Podo2005]

The opinions herein are interesting, except for the fact that they completely miss something.

If changes in the Mass - one person referred to a dumbing down of the Liturgy - have anything to do with it, then why is it the the Catholic Church through this period of change actually is doing better than all of the mainline Protestant churches? They are the ones who have suffered the greatest loss of membership attendance, and they as a whole do not have what could be called high liturgy?

In fact in England, which has been less than enthusiastically accepting of the Catholic Church since Henry 8th, there are more Catholics attending Mass on a regular basis than Anglicans, which is the State Church.

Thoughout Europe, the Catholic Church is suffering much lower attendance than in the US; at best, the US is double the attendance rate, and at worst, the US is about 6 time the attendance rate (Europe is in the range of 15% to 5% attendance on a weekly basis; the US is about 30 -35%).

The three biggest causes appear to be secularism (the minimalization of Church’s influence in the everyday life of individuals), materialism, and the breakdown from extended families to nuclear families, to now single parent familites.

Poland, which went through the upheaval of coming out from under the dominance of Communism and the USSR, is already showing signs of a slacking off of attendance; although they are still light years ahead of the rest of Europe, the single most repeated and pronounced cause appears to be the free market economy which replaced the controlled economic model of Communism; and that in short spells materialism. In just about any period of history, the Church supressed has appeared more vibrant than the Church when not supressed.

Further, relating the decline in attendance to the normative Liturgy ignores the fact that attendance and Church growth is almost explosive in Africa, and the greatest number of ordinations per capita is there; if attendanced drop were due to the “dumbed down” liturgy, then this flies in the face of that cause. Again, Africa is not exactly a model of free economic theory and is not in large part suffering from materialism or secularism.

Exactly people( who don’t go to church anymore) just don’t have their priorities set in the right place anymore. After dealing into materialistic and secularism for so long and the sins that come out of it, the religious life unfortunately has no place or is directly opposed to their lifestyle ( EX: a person might have a serious sin that now has taken over their life such as homosexuality and because the Church teaches that homosexuality is a sin and they are living that sin and dont want to hear the Good News dont go to church…<< one example) In Other words they are “enslaved to their sin” and desperately need our help to come back.

Here in Quebec, Canada we have im embarrassed to say the lowest church ( please pray for this province…)attendance in North America with only 4% French Catholics going to church regularly ( note the french are the majority here, about 90% of the population) whereas 10% of English catholics go to church regularly ( the english are roughly 9%-10% of the population) because of the fact that Quebec is secularized so much and the fact that younger generation ( my generation) is being bombarded with so much **** on t.v. and in music and being taught in school about living your life the way you want to without any regard to morals or what is right in life. Not to mention the tension between French and English people ( been around since the English conquered the french some 300 years ago) which also adds a bit to the problem.

Personally i don’t think modernizing and changing the liturgy of the Church(Vat II) was the problem because it has resulted in good things such as provided us with the use of the vernacular and made the church more of an active community minded church where everybody in the community participates in mass and also a missionary spirited church ( “spirited” as in “focused” unlike the phase " spirit of vatican II" that people use to justify “anything goes”) . The problem ( as stated before) is the secularization and materialization of the world today.

Please pray for all those who do not believe in Christ or who just dont go to church that Christ may find and touch them in their lives and lead them back into the flock ( His Church)

God Bless,
Podo

 

[otjm]

While true the Catholic Church is growing in Africa, it is also at the same time losing members in South America at a much higher rate. Most if not all of those involved are converting to evangelical protestant sects. Ditto for Central America, Mexico and the Philippines, all places where Catholicism has been the dominant force for hundreds of years. By your own numbers Europe by and large is abandoning catholicism and the US while still in a slightly better position isn’t that far behind.

Just because the Church is booming as you say in Africa does not in any way bode well for the future of the institutional church.

I rad a book recently ,“The Diary of an Inner City Priest” A very good book but very sad. In it the author, a Priest in Philadelphia relates his day to day life as Pastor of an inner city Church. He is weary and disillusioned by the practices of the heiarchy of the Church which included the practice of reducing masses in number so that the Masses all seem to be well attended. As he says it it seems all they are interested in is keeping the fiction alive that the church is doing well.

I think that bears paying attention to.

Thanks for bringning up the Church in South and Central America. I can’t remember the name of the author, but in discussing those two areas, he was remarking on the clergy’s embacing Liberation theology; the clergy embraced the poor, and the poor left the Church to embrace Christ (not an exact quote, but close enough); it was the evangelical and fundamental churches which were preaching the Gospel and calling people to conversion and to a personal relationship with Christ, while the clergy and the theologians were puking up a warmed over Marxism and talking about socio-political change. Needless to say, the Catholic Church has been losing people there in droves.

The situation is not exactly one sided, however, as the people “converting” were coming in with Our Lady of Guadalupe and other popular pieties, which of course didn’t exactly fit comfortably with evangelical piety…

But there, too, a combination of lack of catechesis and materialism, and secularism have had their toll. Ask Mexico about secularism, with a history of a fiercely anti-Catholic government.

 

[4HisChurch]

Here are some figures from the book “Index of Leading Catholic Indicators”. The first column is date, 2nd is percentage of Catholics attending Mass, and 3rd is percentage of Protestants attending their services (all USA figures). The intervals are not of equal time spans because that’s not how the data is presented on the graph.

1953 75% 45%
1960 73% 44%
1966 68% 40%
1969 65% 39%
1973 60% 40%
1976 52% 40%
1979 52% 40%
1980 53% 40%
1981 53% 41%
1982 51% 41%
1983 52% 40%
1986 51% 40%
1988 50% 41%
1991 50% 45%
1995 45% 45%

The key thing to note here is that Protestant attendance was very steady through the 1960s, 70s and 80s, and actually started to rise in the 90s. On the other hand, Catholic attendance dropped by an enormous percentage between the early 60s and the mid 70s, leveled off for about 15 years and then started to drop again.

In the 50s and early 60s, Catholic attendance was almost double the percentage of Protestant attendance. By 1995 Catholic attendance had dropped down to Protestant levels.

This is strong evidence to me that one cannot blame the decline on “the secular culture”, since U.S. Protestants were living in the very same culture as U.S. Catholics, but their attendance hardly dropped at all, and by 1995 was as high as it was in the 50s.

These figures make it clear that something happened in the Catholic world in the 60s and 70s that did not happen in the corresponding Protestant world.

Now those are some interesting statistics. It looks to me like the Catholic Church has just about Protestantized itself to the same level of Church attendance as our Protestant bretheran.

 

[4HisChurch]

The primary reason has been the ongoing campaign to destroy the family. And to trivialize the sacredness of marriage and sexual relations. It was a very gradual process. In fact, it took about 30 years.

Early 1960s. Bikini. “The Pill.”
1968. Hippies, Radicals, and Anarchists demand abandonment of all that came before, setting the stage for “Free Love” (sex with anyone, with or without marriage).
1973. Abortion legalized. Mandatory sex education even in Catholic shools.
1978. The National Organization of Women, a radical, secular group, tells women to fight their “oppressors,” which means the men in their lives. Adult Bookstores proliferate. No-fault divorce is spreading from California east.
1980s. Porn on cable. No-Fault Divorce completes its trip across the country. It is difficult for one parent to stay home to help raise the kids because it costs more money to live in a “good” neighborhood.
1990s. Full decline. It’s no longer possible to tell a Christian from a secular person. Divorce rates are about even. Television decides it needs profanity and partial nudity. A character named Murphy Brown has a baby out of wedlock.
2000s. A group of people whose only job is to criticize, belittle, insult and trivialize everything and everybody (except strippers and hookers) are dubbed “shock jocks.”

This poisoned dripped into the Body of Christ very gradually over the last 30 years and now we are seeing the fruit of it. Originally, abortion was ‘use in case of emergency only,’ now it’s abortion on demand. Originally, divorce was ‘use in case of emergency only,’ then it was No-Fault Divorce.

Christian compassion was taken advantage of. “Please, have mercy on us. Allow us to have abortion and no-fault divorce and a whole bunch of other things. Please.” Now those things are trivialized. Abortion? No big deal. Divorce? No big deal. Shacking up? No big deal.

Wake up my brothers and sisters in Christ. The Church I go to is a Church. I’m not concerned about Latin or non-Latin, about Vatican II, or the priest facing forward. I’m there to worship God, to pray to God, to be with God. I’m not there because I think I have to be but because I want to be. And God has to be part of our lives seven days a week.

Seven days a week.

God bless,
Ed

That is an excellent summary of society’s changes, Ed. Thanks for posting it.