Bad Numbers

It is an accident of history that one of the United States’ major research centers happens to be called PEW. Privately endowed fifty years ago to poll a wide range of opinion and sentiment across all aspects of American life, PEW does include religion among its multiple populations. Early this week Crisis Magazine, a conservative Catholic publication which has been sending me free news updates of late, published a lengthy analysis of a newly released PEW study of religion in the United States, a cross section of 34,000 adults. PEW undertakes such religion studies every seven years and has developed a measure of statistical and social expertise on religious practice, integrating trends like the “nones” as they come along. I should note here that the Catholic Church has its own polling instrument conducted by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate [CARA] at Georgetown University, but it is not supported by the U.S. bishops and it is limited in its projects. PEW, on the other hand, is a commercial business which charges for its work.
 
The Crisis report on March 4 begins with the headline “Catholics Are Rapidly Losing Ground.”  For the curious, and especially “numbers geeks,” a detailed breakdown is available here, but for our purposes in this post I will stick to the analysis provided by the editor in chief of Crisis, Eric Sammons. An intriguing metric developed by PEW is the numerical ratio of new members to departing members, or the “join/leave” ratio. Put simply, for every person who enters your parish through infant baptism or the adult rites of initiation, 8.4 persons leave the parish, for a ratio of about 8.4 to 1.0]. Sammons comments that it could be worse: “So while millions are leaving the Catholic Church, immigrants keep the overall numbers from looking horrific.” I wonder if Catholic elected officials in Washington know that.
 
I believe that most Catholic pastors have more than a little inkling of the join/leave ratio. A half-century ago I would look at my own end of year records and contrast infant baptisms against funerals, and I always ran a negative ratio [though the PEW study counts only living people.] PEW found that when youthful or adult Catholics leave the Church, they tend to join the “Nones.” We are hearing more about the Nones, and indeed we should. They are the number one identifiable religious group in America: Nones [32%], Evangelicals [24%], Catholics [23%]. About this group, PEW states: “Most Nones believe in God or another higher power, but very few attend any kind of religious service. They aren't all anti-religious. Most Nones say religion does some harm, but many also think it does some good. Most have more positive views of science than those who are religiously affiliated; however, they reject the idea that science can explain everything.”  

On the precarious state of Catholicism in the U.S., Sammons continues the bad news by pointing out the PEW study definition of a Catholic, i.e., as someone who states to an interviewer that he or she is a Catholic. As members of the Church, we learned a long time ago that we are supposed to go to Mass every Sunday and confess our sins once a year [the latter admittedly a low bar]. PEW did not research how many of the 23% identified Catholics in its study meet the standard of “practicing Catholic” set by Church Law and pastoral practice. Sammons estimates that there are thirteen million practicing Catholics across the country, or 3.8% of all Americans.
 
Sammons proceeds to the burning question; how did we get to this point? He lists his reasons, and while he does skew toward conservative and traditional thinking, at least half of the American Catholic population would find common agreement on several of his points. 

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Ineffective leadership, especially among bishops. The USCCB holds most of its executive conferences [spring and fall] behind locked doors, so it is impossible to know what our American synod of bishop really thinks or how they react to PEW’s study, though clearly, they know about it. Moreover, the clergy abuse scandal and its attendant financial costs and parish closings has made the body more closed mouth than less. Enmeshment in American politics and elections has not proved wise or effective, either.
 
It wasn’t always this way. In 1972, the USCCB issued a book on religious faith formation for the U.S., called To Teach As Jesus Did. It was written with high hopes, but impossible logistics, and I reviewed it here on Amazon a few years ago. A half-century ago, bishops would write such directives—though today that rarely happens—but even in 1972 episcopal teaching had surprisingly little impact or attention.
 
Religious indifference. It is hard to know how the author defines “Indifference.” My experience working for the Church suggests to me that when people give up on the Church, there can be powerful emotions at play: anger, frustration, neglect, etc.
 
Poor Catechesis. One of the worst mistakes we make as the Catholic Church is propagating the idea or model that “catechesis” is a youth ministry. I made this mistake for many years, until one of the newly baptized adults from our catechumenate asked me after Easter, “What’s next?” I was embarrassed to admit, very little.
 
For a multitude of reasons, this issue distresses me intensely because it is the hardest issue to solve. I am immensely impressed with the years of work undertaken by a group of Catholics in my parish who, of their own initiative, meet to study the key documents of Vatican II. But I have witnessed their struggles, too, in such things as selection of sources or commentaries, pedagogy, and group dynamics, and attracting young adults into their studies.
 
There ought to be “house theologians” on the staffs of parishes—or at least of dioceses—who, without disrupting the initiative of local determined Catholics—can provide the sources, insights, and tools to help them achieve both the competence and enthusiasm so essential to evangelization. I would include in this office the development of sampling and purchasing skills for spirituality and theology texts for individual and group use. It is no accident that the best teachers and preachers are voracious and prayerful readers. [The printed treasures that await us….]
 
Sadly, I don’t see this happening soon on a large scale. Despite Canon Law’s dictate that every bishop and every pastor is the chief teacher/catechist of his community, the idea of educating adults with the same urgency as we do First Communion and Confirmation candidates has rarely taken root. We don't include sermons in faith formation discussions. In fact, listen to the sermons in your own parish. If there is a certain “sameness” to each week’s sermon, this is a “tell” that the preacher is either not preparing or not reading religious scholarship. When a priest or deacon preaches and doesn’t read, he reverts to the one or two sermons you in the pew are subjected to over and over. Take it to the bank. Of course, the same principle holds true for our own private meditation and prayer.
 
Scandals within the Church. This is a multilayered tragedy. The first layer was the victimizations. The second was the wholesale revelations of episcopal coverup. We are now in the third phase, coming to grips with the significant financial deficiencies of the Church that face us now and in the future. About 25% of Catholic Dioceses have declared bankruptcy. This may come as a shock, but on my reading desk I have a new copy of Gone for Good: Negotiating the Coming Wave of Church Property Transition [2024]. Did you expect to need that in your lifetime? The anger in my home diocese [Buffalo] about church closures and sales is palpable. 
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Sammons has other issues he believes drive people from the Catholic Church, but I think we have enough here to get a grasp on why so many people have grabbed a lifebuoy and jumped off the bark of Peter.
 
Clearly, the upper echelon of the Church—both in Rome and the United States—will need to enter a prolonged period of assessing its strengths and weaknesses, lasting at least 60 years or the time since the last Church Council [1962-1965]. But that need not be a discouragement. You must wonder if Pope Francis saw the need for a “rethinking” when he declared the move to Synodality—community between all members of the Church, lay and priestly. [It is unfortunate—although predictable--that most American bishops avoided participation in the synodal process at the local/parish/diocesan level like the plague.]
 
But…Evangelization cannot wait. It is a welcome gift, the Holy Spirit come to us in Scripture, lectio divina or sacred writing, and the fraternity of fellow seekers of God’s truth and love. If we bring one fellow seeker into our lives or our groups, we have done God’s work.