Catholic Practice

Friday February 29, 2008

A recent survey conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life drew the attention of the media and other ‘interested’ parties about the changes taking place in religious practice in the USA. Of particular note was the fact that there is an increasing disaffection with and defection from the rank and file of Catholics in the pew. Although the total US Catholic census remains substantially the same due to the increase in the number of Latinos in the United States, the number of Caucasian Catholics who identify themselves as practicing Catholics is declining.

Here’s the article, courtesy of the NY Times, February 25, 2008:

Americans Change Faiths at Rising Rate, Report Finds
By Neela Banerjee.

WASHINGTON — More than a quarter of adult Americans have left the faith of their childhood to join another religion or no religion, according to a new survey of religious affiliation by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

The report, titled “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey,” depicts a highly fluid and diverse national religious life. If shifts among Protestant denominations are included, then it appears that 44 percent of Americans have switched religious affiliations.

For at least a generation, scholars have noted that more Americans are moving among faiths, as denominational loyalty erodes. But the survey, based on interviews with more than 35,000 Americans, offers one of the clearest views yet of that trend, scholars said. The United States Census does not track religious affiliation.

The report shows, for example, that every religion is losing and gaining members, but that the Roman Catholic Church “has experienced the greatest net losses as a result of affiliation changes.” The survey also indicates that the group that had the greatest net gain was the unaffiliated. More than 16 percent of American adults say they are not part of any organized faith, which makes the unaffiliated the country’s fourth largest “religious group.”

Detailing the nature of religious affiliation — who has the numbers, the education, the money — signals who could hold sway over the country’s political and cultural life, said John Green, an author of the report who is a senior fellow on religion and American politics at Pew.

Michael Lindsay, assistant director of the Center on Race, Religion and Urban Life at Rice University, echoed that view. “Religion is the single most important factor that drives American belief attitudes and behaviors,” said Mr. Lindsay, who had read the Pew report. “It is a powerful indicator of where America will end up on politics, culture, family life. If you want to understand America, you have to understand religion in America.”

In the 1980s, the General Social Survey by the National Opinion Research Center indicated that from 5 percent to 8 percent of the population described itself as unaffiliated with a particular religion.

In the Pew survey 7.3 percent of the adult population said they were unaffiliated with a faith as children. That segment increases to 16.1 percent of the population in adulthood, the survey found. The unaffiliated are largely under 50 and male. “Nearly one-in-five men say they have no formal religious affiliation, compared with roughly 13 percent of women,” the survey said.

The rise of the unaffiliated does not mean that Americans are becoming less religious, however. Contrary to assumptions that most of the unaffiliated are atheists or agnostics, most described their religion “as nothing in particular.” Pew researchers said that later projects would delve more deeply into the beliefs and practices of the unaffiliated and would try to determine if they remain so as they age.

While the unaffiliated have been growing, Protestantism has been declining, the survey found. In the 1970s, Protestants accounted for about two-thirds of the population. The Pew survey found they now make up about 51 percent. Evangelical Christians account for a slim majority of Protestants, and those who leave one evangelical denomination usually move to another, rather than to mainline churches.

To Prof. Stephen Prothero, large numbers of Americans leaving organized religion and large numbers still embracing the fervor of evangelical Christianity point to the same desires.
“The trend is toward more personal religion, and evangelicals offer that,” said Mr. Prothero, chairman of the religion department at Boston University, who explained that evangelical churches tailor many of their activities for youth. “Those losing out are offering impersonal religion and those winning are offering a smaller scale: mega-churches succeed not because they are mega but because they have smaller ministries inside.”

The percentage of Catholics in the American population has held steady for decades at about 25 percent. But that masks a precipitous decline in native-born Catholics. The proportion has been bolstered by the large influx of Catholic immigrants, mostly from Latin America, the survey found.

The Catholic Church has lost more adherents than any other group: about one-third of respondents raised Catholic said they no longer identified as such. Based on the data, the survey showed, “this means that roughly 10 percent of all Americans are former Catholics.”

Immigration continues to influence American religion greatly, the survey found. The majority of immigrants are Christian, and almost half are Catholic. Muslims rival Mormons for having the largest families. And Hindus are the best-educated and among the richest religious groups, the survey found.

“I think politicians will be looking at this survey to see what groups they ought to target,” Professor Prothero said. “If the Hindu population is negligible, they won’t have to worry about it. But if it is wealthy, then they may have to pay attention.”
Experts said the wide-ranging variety of religious affiliation could set the stage for further conflicts over morality or politics, or new alliances on certain issues, as religious people have done on climate change or Jews and Hindus have done over relations between the United States, Israel and India.
“It sets up the potential for big arguments,” Mr. Green said, “but also for the possibility of all sorts of creative synthesis. Diversity cuts both ways.”

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
___________

There is another category of Catholics who are not leaving the Church but who are shopping for a parish in which their faith is nourished and in which people ‘in the pew’ are treated as intelligent adults. In the absence of such, Catholics are ‘in diaspora,’ i.e., they refuse to abandon their Catholic roots but are establishing ‘intentional’ communities or what some call, ‘house churches’ in which they gather to celebrated Eucharist or engaged in a Eucharistic service. The article below is one more indication of the disaffection that is increasing among Catholics who are searching for an environment in which they are able to celebrated their Christian tradition in a meaningful way.

Our Broken Parish
When respect for the laity is lost

By ‘A Parishioner’ | AMERICA Magazine, February 11, 2008

Do not fret because of the wicked;
do not be envious of wrongdoers….
Trust in the Lord, and do good.
—Psalm 37:1, 3

While we Catholics profess universality, the fact is that Catholic parishes can differ radically. I do not just mean culturally, in the way that a parish on the island of Guam is different from a parish in the city of Stuttgart, but in the way a parish in one part of Los Angeles, say, can be quite different from one in another part of that city. Or in Boston. Or Atlanta. Or Chicago. Parishes vary in music, in ministry, in outreach, in liturgy, in attitude, in teaching style.

In big cities Catholics can parish-shop, looking for a Catholic community that is a good fit for them. Living in a small town, however, can be a difficult proposition for a Catholic. In our town, newcomers can church-shop among the Christian houses of worship, of which there are many. But Catholics have only one choice: our parish.

When my husband and I moved here over 20 years ago, that fact made us a bit nervous. We had come from a metropolitan area, where there was a Catholic church every few miles and where we parish-shopped. When we really liked the homilies of a priest who worked at the parish in the next suburb over, we got permission to switch our affiliation to that parish, which was a 10-minute drive rather than a two-minute drive from our house. In our new small-town life, the next closest Catholic parish was 50 miles away. So we were relieved when our local pastor turned out to be an intelligent, affable older priest with an open mind and an interest in establishing new ministries and services within the parish. He was a delight, and we felt accepted and challenged at our new parish—a healthy combination. We felt lucky. We felt blessed.

Eventually that priest retired and then passed away. He had baptized our two youngest children and had made us feel like an integral part of our faith community. Now, two decades and a couple of pastors later, we are still here. Our Catholic roots are deeply, emphatically here. This is the church where all of our children have come of spiritual age, receiving their first Communion and the sacrament of confirmation, and where friends have been married and buried. But like never before, we are now contemplating making that 50-mile-each-way weekly commute to another parish.

Why? Our parish has become for us a place of anger and artifice, of division and dysfunction. A 50-mile trip does not seem too great a sacrifice to make, if by staying where we are we become resentful, non-practicing Catholics. But the 50 miles does present burdens. At that distance, how can my husband and I both be involved socially and in ministry beyond Sunday Mass, the way we want to be? How does our teenager feel about attending a youth group full of strangers? We are reluctant to commit ourselves to a parish so far from home.

A New Pastor

The origin of our crisis may be obvious by now: we have a new pastor. The new pastor has brought new priorities with which we do not agree. He also believes that the parishioners are the sheep and he is the shepherd, which translates to: My way or the highway. He enjoys all the power, without the intuition or skill of leadership.

Since his arrival, the parish staff has experienced a 100 percent turnover (including this writer), and three deacons have requested assignments elsewhere. That’s right: at parishes 50 miles away. The parish office, as well as the finance council, is currently staffed by good Catholics who believe that enduring the ego and wrath of their boss is simply an opportunity to turn some exquisite suffering over to God. For the greater glory of God and the Catholic Church, these suffering servants put up with impossible working conditions. For those of us who used to work there, the conditions were affecting our health, our families, our ministries—indeed, our faith—in unacceptable ways. One by one, through various combinations of prayer, counseling and sleepless nights, we came to the painful conclusion that the only sane option, the only way to relieve our cognitive dissonance, was to give notice.

It is hard to describe the parish situation without appearing to cast stones. Every priest is unique in his gifts and his shortcomings, and living in and contributing to an authentic faith community is never simple or easy. Of course there will be differences of opinion, and differing commitments and callings, among parishioners. But the Gospel is the Gospel. To be a dwelling place for the Gospel, a healthy parish requires cooperation, compassion, listening, honesty, respect, trust and shared goals, just for starters. But when all of those things go missing, the community has no foundation on which to rest as it weathers storms. The storms take over. The structure is lost.

Broken, Isolated, Adrift

We are, I believe, a broken parish. We do not really know what to do, other than pray. The priest shortage is partly to blame, as is our own surrender to frustration. Our pastor has accused some of us of a conspiracy to bring him down, but really, we are just broken in our own little ways, isolated and adrift. Some of us who can afford the gas commute to other parishes. Some of us skip Mass. Some of us have begun to give our offerings to other charities, where our dollars will be put to responsible and life-affirming use. We realize, when we are berated for the dwindling collection plate, that we have perhaps hit upon the only vote that counts: our money. This makes us even sadder.

We are Catholics in search of a parish, wanting to practice the corporal works of mercy, but wanting also to be treated as adult persons of faith. We understand the shepherd imagery, but we are not actually sheep. We are thoughtful, functional, searching, caring grownups of good will. We require honesty, a well-formed conscience and a bit of humility in a pastor, because, like it or not, the pastor makes or breaks a parish.

I have lately wondered how many other Catholics, in other parts of the world, have decided to sit out parish life because of a heedless hierarchy addicted to trappings and power. How many laypeople find that their gifts and talents go unused, that their leaders are not interested in what they have to say or to offer, that although they are believers, they just do not need the grief of parish life? And if, besides, no one seems to miss them?

If Jesus himself, disguised as a layperson, visited some of our parishes, if he sat somewhere in the middle and did not sing very loudly and forgot his envelope, would he feel welcomed, loved and necessary?

I may be disillusioned and discouraged, but I am also stubborn. Much as I mourn our current state of affairs, I tell myself that I refuse to leave. Not only am I a Catholic, I tell myself; I am also a local Catholic. Our parish may be broken, but our faith is not dead, not as long as we find ways to see Christ in others and as long as we try to be the face and hands of Christ for others. We are called to live as Christ’s followers, a call we must honor and answer, even when we are tired and tapped out, and even when our parish gets in the way.

All the same, each week, I edge a little closer to that long commute. I know that through the centuries the church has survived and grown despite bad pastors, misguided bishops and inept popes. But probably not without some serious parish-shopping on the part of the laity.

The author is not identified here to protect both the staff and pastor of the parish described.

____

I would add only that the clerical system is broken and that’s why a Catholic parish is at risk in today’s church. But more about that in a future article.
Fr. Lasch

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