November 20, 2009
 
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| Why Are They Leaving? An InsideCatholic Symposium |
| by InsideCatholic Staff and Friends |
| 3/11/08 |
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The Wall Street Journal examines the winners and losers in the recent Pew survey by noting that "religions that demand the most of people are growing the fastest." Want proof that the dynamic described is at work in the Catholic Church? Take a look at Mass attendance figures for Denver, whose shepherd, Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, is a model of orthodoxy:
Mass attendance in the Denver Archdiocese is higher than that of the national average, shows a recent survey commissioned by the Denver Archdiocese. The survey also shows that a majority of Catholics in the archdiocese, 51 percent, are "fervent" or "faithful" in their belief.
A total of 45 percent of local Catholics polled said they attended Mass in the prior week, compared to 32 percent nationally. Want more proof? The inverse of Denver is Rochester, whose shepherd, Bishop Matthew Clark, serves the same weak tea as the mainline Protestant denominations. There, Mass attendance is in a free-fall, dropping almost 20 percent since 2000. Rich Leonardi blogs at richleonardi.blogspot.com.
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The published findings of the recent Pew Forum survey (PFS) should, without a doubt, provoke a keen sense of urgency among Catholics. Pope John Paul II called for the Church to take up a New Evangelization, and the internal need for better catechesis and ongoing adult formation is widely acknowledged.
Before we think the situation appears too bleak, however, three qualifications to the PFS conclusions should be made, which, while not exhaustive, are particularly revealing. First, when MSNBC reports that the "Roman Catholic Church has lost more members than any faith tradition," it should be remembered that these are absolute numbers, not relative numbers, because the Catholic Church is the largest faith group in America. Thus, while Catholicism has retained 68 percent of its members, Baptists only retain 60 percent; Episcopalians, 45 percent; and Jehovah's Witnesses, 37 percent. The reason that 10 percent of Americans are ex-Catholics is that Catholics had by far the most American members to begin with. Second, broadly speaking, it is more demanding to be a Catholic nowadays than it is to be a member of a Protestant denomination. Few other faiths have retained an intact teaching about sexual morality or life issues. Catholicism still teaches that abortion, contraception, cloning, and homosexual acts are objectively wrong, and people have left the Church because of this. In liturgical and sacramental questions, similarly, the Church keeps its tradition: Divorced Catholics who have not received an annulment cannot remarry in the Church, nor does the Church allow the ordination of women to the priesthood. In sum, people leave the Church because of the commandments, not necessarily the Creed. Third, those Catholics who have remained with the Church have demonstrated a tested fidelity to the faith of their upbringing that should not be ignored. Gone are the days when it could be presumed someone would die in the same faith they were born into. Many Catholics who have remained Catholic experience something akin to being "born again," returning to a Catholic faith that they may have abandoned for some time. Again, the Pew Forum has no way of measuring how likely it is for someone to switch back into their former faith, nor does it have a way of measuring the transition of so-called "cradle Catholics" into self-consciously "proud Catholics," by which I mean those who have actually "switched" to the Church, even if they were already technically a baptized member of it. I do not mean these three considerations to diminish the urgent need for all Catholics to address the causes of defection. Thirty-two percent of Catholics leaving the faith is still 32 percent too high. But the most effective external evangelization must start with better self-understanding and disciplined self-catechesis. Thomas Peters studies and works in Washington, D.C., and blogs at AmericanPapist.com. ♦ ♦ ♦
What accounts for the recent exodus of American Catholics from the Church? In a word -- narcissism. The culture of self-love that has sprung up in our time is one of the principal reasons why I believe American Catholics are leaving the faith. They leave because it's more about "me" than it is about God. They say, "I don't get anything out of Mass," but rarely ask what they should be bringing to it. They complain about the rules (particularly those that deal with sex or mandatory attendance) but never seem to entertain the notion that the rules might serve a good purpose, even if it's one they may not fully understand. G. K. Chesterton famously replied to a newspaper inquiry on the question of "What's wrong with the world?" with two simple words: "I am." It strikes me that the attitude of those leaving the Church en masse,if asked the same question, would be, "It isn't me!" The narcissist never sees a failure in his own doing; it's always a problem with the system or with somebody else.
Because of this, one's religious creed has become less of an eternal obligation and more like a check box on the consumer satisfaction index. "If my religion fails to give me the good feelings I'm looking for, I'll simply shop around until I find a better one."
In this regard, it's no wonder they're leaving the Catholic Church. Despite quite a lot of bad theology and shameless pandering to emotion in the last 50 years, Catholicism is still too immutably centered on the crucifixion to truly please the narcissist. The passion, death, and resurrection of Our Lord is inseparable from our law, as well as our liturgy. With each consecration of the Eucharist we look upon Golgotha, facing our own sinfulness and feeling compelled to worship our savior rather than ourselves. This is why the laser light and rock music shows that pass for religion in some other denominations never make sense in ours: The others may talk about Calvary every Sunday but we go there, and there is no place for entertainment masquerading as religion when standing at the foot of the cross.
Perhaps the saddest thing is that the self-love of the departing faithful has been nourished by pastors. The abandonment of ad orientem has given Catholics a false but heightened sense of self-importance; after all, the priest has turned his back on God to have a dialogue with us. Add bad catechesis, poor sermons, lousy liturgy, vapid confessions, and so on, and Catholics are left wondering what, exactly, is worth staying for. At the megachurch down the street, they can have more fun and follow fewer rules, and the doughnuts and coffee are better, too.
A little card my uncle had in his house said, "The Catholic Church: Never Popular, Always Attractive." If we want to keep them, we have to remember how to be Catholic again.
Steve Skojec is a columnist and blogger for InsideCatholic.com. Visit his personal blog at skojec.wordpress.com.
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The Pew study identifies 10 percent of all Americans as "ex-Catholic," making the U.S. Catholic Church "the group that has experienced the greatest net loss by far." The data points for young adults as hard hit -- most of whom are "currently unaffiliated with any particular religion." Indeed, Pew reports that 16.1 percent of the U.S. population is "unaffiliated," with over 25 percent of that group being raised Catholic and 31 percent being under the age 30 (compared to 20 percent of the overall adult population).
There's no surprise here. The 2001 report "Young Adult Catholics: Religion in the Culture of Choice"warned, "Catholicism's institutional vitality, public witness, and capacity to retain its young are in jeopardy." As the count currently stands, only 18 percent of Catholics are 18-29. Academics have attempted to identify prominent factors for this youthful disillusionment. In Being Catholic in a Culture of Choice, Thomas Rausch of Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles cited young adults' desire for "a more egalitarian, participatory, and democratic community."
These numbers, it seems to me, reflect a normal faith cycle now aggravated by a culture "whose idols are pleasure, comfort and independence," to use John Paul II's phrase -- a culture that has mislead many Catholic educators to water-down and even dissent from core Church teachings. The danger lies in these cafeteria Catholics pressuring to implement as a solution the very tactic which has undoubtedly contributed to the disaffection in the first place: dilution of doctrinal authority in the core teaching areas of the Church. Calls for a more "youth friendly" Catholicism -- in other words, less authoritarianism with greater "tolerance," particularly on sexual issues -- must be soundly rejected. It is the authoritative teaching of moral truth that brings our young adults back to active Catholicism. In fact, 41 percent of U.S. Catholics are 30-49 years of age, compared to 39 percent of the population overall.
In 2001, I was involved in founding the only Catholic private preschool in San Francisco. Now, seven years later, we have a long waiting list of families desperately seeking admission into our doctrinally uncompromised Catholic school. Pew might have counted many of these young adults "unaffiliated" but, faced with the formation of their first child, the structure, authority and truth of the teachings of the Catholic Church take on a profound significance that self-centered pursuits in the culture of choice and compromised teaching had obscured. Their hearts are turned by love, their heads turn toward reason. As John Paul II said, "God endowed [the human race] with the capacity to attain to the inaccessible and invisible Supreme Good and behold it face to face."
Once they get it, they are Catholic forever.
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