Posted on 08/01/2025 9:04:44 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
A recent analysis by Catholic commentator Phil Lawler points to a sobering conclusion: The dramatic drop in Mass attendance across the Western world can be traced to the Second Vatican Council.
In a July 28 article for Catholic Culture, Lawler cited new research from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) that challenges long-held assumptions in the ongoing debate over whether the Second Vatican Council or broader cultural trends caused the decline in Catholic practice.
“Throughout the Western world, Catholic Mass attendance has declined dramatically since Vatican II. That is an established fact,” Lawler stated.
The new NBER working paper, “Looking Backward: Long-Term Religious Service Attendance in 66 Countries,” concludes that Vatican II “triggered a decline in worldwide Catholic attendance relative to that in other denominations.”
Lawler noted that this decline was especially pronounced among Catholics, suggesting that broader secularizing trends alone cannot account for the drop in religious practice.
“After an exhaustive evaluation of the available data, the NBER dismisses the notion that a worldwide secularizing trend hit all religious institutions more or less equally,” he wrote. “Not so, the working paper finds.”
According to Lawler, the study’s authors argue that the data are “consistent with the view that Vatican II shattered the perception of an immovable, truthholding Church.”
He also noted the authors’ claim that the Council’s negative effect on the number of women religious contributed to broader demographic changes.
“Vatican II’s depressing influence on the number of nuns led to a sharp decline in fertility among Catholics because of the loss of childbearing support,” Lawler quoted from the study, along with the resulting “collapse of the parochial school system.”
The significance of the NBER’s work lies not just in its conclusions but also in its source, according to Lawler.
“The NBER is a heavyweight institution in the field of economic research,” he said, pointing to its history of academic rigor and its roster of affiliated scholars, including more than 20 Nobel Prize winners in economics.
He added that the study’s authors bring no ecclesial agenda, as they are secular researchers focused on data analysis, not engaged in theological or intra-Church disputes.
“They don’t have a dog in that fight,” he said.
Lawler concluded that the central finding of the NBER study is difficult to dismiss: the Second Vatican Council marked the beginning of a significant and unexpected downturn in Catholic religious practice.
Citing the authors directly, he noted that “the decline in attendance is specific to Catholicism, to which Vatican II would directly apply,” and that the data point to the Council itself as “the event that precipitated the decline.”
So ... undo Vatican II and start recovering.
No? Out of the question? Just gonna keep doing what they’re doing?
RE: So ... undo Vatican II and start recovering.
So, you want the return to the Latin Mass as well? Before Vatican II, the Mass in the Roman Catholic Church was celebrated almost exclusively in Latin, using the Tridentine Rite.
It was the default pre-Vatican 2. After Vatican 2, it was No longer broadly authorized by default. It’s Subject to diocesan approval and Restricted from being celebrated in parish churches without explicit Vatican permission.
Catholicism as a gay church will be a much smaller church.
The Church, since the Council, has been willing to discard everything that is recognizably Catholic in order to fulfill this new preoccupation of presenting itself in a different fashion to the Catholic laypeople and to the non-Catholic world. And for the sake of having a different image to the non-Catholic world, it has shown itself indifferent to the faith of the people so that the people are beside themselves with confusion.
Regardless of whether Vatican II would be reversed, a return to the old Mass would be an excellent step.
First note -
The Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) took place from October 11, 1962, to December 8, 1965. It was convened by Pope John XXIII and concluded under Pope Paul VI. The council consisted of four sessions held in the autumns of 1962, 1963, 1964, and 1965.
I was raised as a Catholic, even went to a parochial school for grade school, until I escaped.
I left the church without a backward look - sermons were either money begging or rants on abortion. Period.
This was well before the horror of homosexual, pedophile rapists were exposed in the press.
NO one in my family will now even admit in public they had, at one time, followed that ‘faith’.
Catholicism is never going to ‘come back’ - ever. It is now just a rotting corpse of a once powerful organization.
YMMV
I did 12 years of Catholic School, and I was “Altar Boy No. 1” in grade school, served the 6AM Mass for the nuns by myself. When I was in high school the pastor got a new car. Pastors lived with a “vow of poverty” but they do need cars so no problem there. But a new Chevelle with a 396?! That was my first hint something was off.
No S*** Sherlock!
I have been visiting a Latin mass occasionally.
Many young families and MEN!
Why? They do not take a vow of poverty.
I would assume most Catholics want to practice the Christian faith.
Our Church held a raffle one year, first prize was a new Cadillac. Guess who won? Our pastor proudly drove around town in it for 5 years.
I was told they did back then.
No. Most of the nuns did and certainly the brothers. Some of the orders. But not the regular priests.
Family friends had a priest who was like an uncle to us all. They were comfortable and he drove a new Lincoln every two years.
Depends on the Charism (Fransciscan, Benedictine, Dominican, Jesuit...). I don’t remember from what to what but the parish I grew up in changed from a vow of poverty Charism to one of the other ones. The former priest were skinny and always wore black with collar. The latter often dressed in street clothes.
RCINC is the oldest most profitable multinational corporation on the planet. Amazing how they cry poverty but have the resources to hide a 500$/hr defense team to defend their pedo priests while smearing the reputation’s of their. Victims.
Thanks, I had Sisters of St. Mary in elementary, can’t remember the priests’ order but they weren’t Jesuits, they were frowned on in Texas in the 60’s, considered too liberal. There was a Jesuit High School over in Dallas, biggest rival in high school football. Rich kids. I had Brothers of Maryknoll in high school, mixed bag from great to mean.
Religious bigotry.
Talk about the public screwls and the pederasts that work there
Catholicism IS the Christian faith.
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