March 11, 2008
TOPIC: WHERE HAVE ALL THE CATHOLICS GONE?
Dear Subscriber:
Thought I had been kidnapped and spirited out of the country, did you? Wondered if anti-Catholic hooligans had restrained me, by force, from writing the E-Letter? No, it's more prosaic than that.
I've been laboring under those administrative duties that have to be dealt with, that can't be passed along to others, and that sometimes cascade upon you all at once. That's the penalty I get for starting an apostolate and then discovering--contrary to my expectations--that it continues to grow (and to have those pains that growth entails).
THE EXODUS THAT CAUGHT MY ATTENTION
When I first got involved in apologetics, more than twenty years ago, my attention was focused mainly on the Fundamentalist attack on the Church. There was good reason for such a focus.
In the 1980s, so far as I could determine, more than 100,000 Catholics in America had been leaving the Church each year for Fundamentalist churches. Some of those churches boasted that a majority of their congregants were one-time Catholics. A few even claimed that all of their members had been Catholic.
An exodus of 100,000 people per year is not insignificant, but it was not the only exodus the Church in America was experiencing. An even larger number of Catholics just dropped out, becoming "inactive Catholics" or "lapsed Catholics."
Despite all this, the number of Catholics kept rising, even in the 1980s. That chiefly was because of immigration (both legal and illegal), not so much because of a large number of births (there were births, but not so many that they could raise the Catholic proportion of the population by much) and not because of conversions (there were conversions, but not all that many).
Things have changed a bit in the last two decades.
Catholic births remain about the same, as does growth attributed to immigration. Today there is a more sophisticated methodology to deal with potential converts (RCIA), and there is more emphasis on convert making (though it isn't called that by Church officials).
STILL LEAVING, BUT NOT AS MANY TO "BIBLE CHURCHES"
Perhaps the greatest change is in the number of people leaving the Church. Many still leave, but the number seems to be shrinking. In part this may mean that the most disgruntled people already have opted out. But one thing is sure: Fewer people leave for Fundamentalism.
I like to think that the work performed by Catholic Answers has contributed to each of these categories, particularly with respect to the losses to Fundamentalism. (I should add that our mostly young staff has done its part to increase the number of infant baptisms!)
In 1988, when I entered this work full time, there were Fundamentalists who were coming into the Church, but their number was exceeded by far by those Catholics who were leaving the Church for Fundamentalism.
I have to work on the basis of anecdotal evidence here, but my sense is that today we have reached equilibrium, with the goings and comings now balanced. We may even have reached a favorable point in which there are more entries from Fundamentalism than exits to Fundamentalism. It's a change very pleasant to see!
A NEW SURVEY
That said, the current situation remains far from rosy. According to a recent study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, the Catholic Church loses a greater proportion of its members than does any other major religion in America.
In recent years the Baptists lost a fair proportion of those brought up as Baptists. They became something else. The Methodists lost a smaller proportion of those brought up as Methodists. But Catholics lost the biggest proportion of all.
I have not seen the full study and so can't comment on its methodology, but I have to put a question mark by the results. The study says that today 23.9% of Americans identify themselves as Catholics, a figure that parallels other figures I have seen over the years. But the study says that 31.4% of the American population had been brought up in the Catholic Church. The difference--7.5% of the total American population--represents people who were Catholics as children but ceased to be Catholics as adults. Where did the 31.4% figure come from?
If the proportion of Catholics in the general population has been stable for decades, at around 23.9%, and if that number included children (which is did--and does), then how can one say that at some point during these years 31.4% of all Americans (or at least of child-age Americans) were Catholic--particularly when the Catholic birth rate wasn't much different from that of the rest of the population?
However we are to understand these numbers, one thing is for sure: Many Catholics leave the Church of their upbringing and become something else. This was true when I entered this work, and it remains true today.
Those who leave may be leaving in different proportions and may be ending up in different places than was the case a few decades ago, but the fact to keep in mind is that they are leaving. It's great to have fewer Catholics leave for Fundamentalism; it still is a problem to have any of them leave at all.
We still have lots of work to do.
Until next time,
Karl
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