Last week the Pew Research Center released a new survey on religion in America; their first major study of this type since 2014. Upon the survey’s publication, I could almost hear a collective groan from Catholics, since we’ve come to approach such polls with a sense of dread. The question isn’t, “Will it be bad?” The question is, “How bad will it be?”
I won’t bury the lede: it’s bad. Really bad.
Only 19% of Americans self-identify as Catholic, down from 24% in 2007. This is a 20% decrease. By comparison, Protestants decreased by 21%, while religious “nones” increased by 81% and Muslims increased by an astounding 200% (although they still make up a small percentage of the overall population—only 1.2%). Even though the Pew Survey headline suggests that the decline in Christianity in this country may have “leveled off,” it’s clear the overall direction is downward.
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The numbers get worse for Catholics. Perhaps the most stunning finding in the survey is that for every 100 people who join the Catholic Church, 840 leave. So when you rejoice seeing folks become Catholic at Easter (which you should), remember that more than 8 people have left by the back door for each one who’s come in the front.
No other religion has nearly as bad of a join/leave ratio. For every 100 people that become Protestant, 180 leave. That’s bad, but it’s not Catholic bad. Conversely, for every 100 people who leave the religious “nones” (i.e., they join a religion), a full 590 become part of that irreligious cohort.
Where are the former Catholics going? Of all the former Catholics, 56% become religious “nones” and 32% become Protestant. I think we all know from personal experience that these numbers ring true. What Catholic doesn’t have family members who have become Protestant or have stopped practicing any religion? It’s just part of being an American Catholic these days.
Like I said, it’s bad. But it’s actually much worse than you might first think from those numbers.
You might have noticed something peculiar about what I’ve shown so far. If so many people are leaving the Church, how is it that the total number has only dropped by 20%? Shouldn’t it be more?
Yes, but there’s something that keeps the numbers slightly afloat: immigration. As the Pew Survey itself states, “immigration has helped to bolster the number of Catholics in the United States.” So while millions are fleeing the Catholic Church, new migrants keep the overall numbers from looking horrific. I’m not saying our bishops are working so hard to keep mass immigration alive in this country to keep the true horrible state of the Church hidden, but the inflow sure does end up having that effect.
However, that’s not all the bad news (I’m starting to feel like a TV salesman constantly saying, “But wait! There’s more!”). All of the numbers above reflect self-identifying Catholics; it makes no distinction between practicing and non-practicing Catholics. If you say you’re Catholic, then you’re counted as Catholic. We know, of course, that what really matters, when it comes to the salvation of souls, is actually practicing the Catholic Faith.
Fortunately, the survey also asks about attendance at religious services, but these numbers are also discouraging. Only 29% of self-identifying Catholics attend Mass weekly. So only 29% of the 19% of Americans who identify as Catholic actually fulfill the Sunday obligation.
At the risk of earning broken record status, I think it’s even worse. The Pew survey doesn’t ask about going to Confession, but based on other surveys I’ve seen over the years, the total number of self-identifying Catholics who go to Confession at least once a year is around 10%. Let’s be optimistic and say it’s actually around 20% and that all those Catholics also go to Mass weekly.
Based on the very-minimally-defined idea of a “practicing Catholic” as someone who attends Mass weekly and Confession yearly, probably at most 20% of the 19% of self-identified Catholics are practicing Catholics.
Let’s run these numbers:
- 340 million Americans
- 19% self-identify as Catholic: 64.6 million Catholics
- 20% of those Catholics: 12.92 million practicing Catholics, or 3.8% of all Americans
Compare this number of practicing Catholics to the 98.6 million religious “nones”—there are almost eight times more religious nones in America than practicing Catholics. And then remember more than 50 million of the people who identify as Catholics don’t even do the minimum to be considered practicing their faith in any real sense.
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Like I said, the news is bad. Very bad.
The two questions that naturally arise when looking at these dire numbers are:
1) How did this happen?
2) What can we do to correct it?
Obviously, we must answer the first question before we can answer the second, but unfortunately most Catholic leaders are wholly uninterested in that first question. They might want to talk about how we can attract new Catholics, but they will not seriously look at why so many are leaving. Yet, for every 100 new Catholics there are 840 former Catholics. We absolutely must look at what caused this problem in the first place.
Catholics ignoring the problem is the biggest challenge, but there is another challenge: giving simplistic answers. There is no “silver bullet” that will reverse the decline. Just spreading the TLM (the trad silver bullet) or improving catechesis (the conservative silver bullet) or accepting modern sexual mores (the liberal silver bullet) won’t solve the problem. There is no one answer for how to move forward.
