Does the American Catholic Church Have a Numbers Problem?

A fascinating Pew report out today finds that most Americans have changed religious affiliation at least once and that within this dramatic religious churn, Roman Catholicism is the biggest loser. Four times as many Catholics are leaving the faith as are joining it, the study finds.

And yet an upbeat E-mail from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops landed in my inbox today, with this triumphant first sentence:

How could the American religious tradition that boasts one of the highest retention rates be losing the most members? Easy, says Pew: because Catholicism is attracting so few newcomers.

Catholics are leaving the faith at four times the rate that newcomers are joining. "Religious change is not simply a function of retention; it's a function of recruitment. It's both sides of the ledger," explains the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life's Greg Smith. "In no other religious groups we looked at did we see this high a ratio people leaving versus joining."

And yet Catholics still account for just under a quarter of the population, as they have for many years. That's because the surge in Hispanic immigration has offset the steady decline of white Catholics. Roughly 2 in 3 Latino immigrants are Catholic, according to Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum. He also notes that Hispanic fertility rates are higher than those of white Americans, ensuring more Latino Catholic growth in the United States.

These countervailing trends in American Catholicism raise a question: Does the American Catholic Church have a numbers problem? Or, facing an American demographic future that's much less white than today, is the church's complexion merely changing with the nation's?

lol. There's a world of difference between "changing denominations" and "dropping out."

OK, have it your way.

Raised Catholic, now unaffiliated	4%
Raised Catholic, now Protestant	5%
Raised Protestant, now Unaffiliated	7%
Raised Protestant, now different Protestant denomination	15%
Raised unaffiliated, now affiliated	4%
Other change in religious affiliation*	9%
Not in the graphic, but buried in text -- part of that 9% above Raised other than Catholic, now Catholic	2.6%

From Executive Summary, page 1.

So we can look at 5% of Catholics switching to another denomination and 17.6% of Protestants switching to another denomination (15% to another Protestant denomination and 2.6% to being Catholic). Since they don't break down the "other change in affiliation", we could say most accurately that between 5% and 14% of Catholics switch to another denomination and that between 15% and 24% of Protestants switch to another denomination.

But either way, the way the story is being reported really doesn't reflect the data. Hopefully you can get past your blinding hatred of the Catholic Church to recognize that fact.

The surrender of the church to the "Gay Pervert Lottery" is the root cause. Many Catholics simply refused to pay the bill, directly or indirectly.

According to the data gained by this report, that's not true (and it surprised me to read that, as well).

There is a whole section of the report, beginning on p23, that discuss the reasons why Catholics left.

When asked to say whether or not each of a number of specific items was a reason for leaving Catholicism, most former Catholics say they gradually drifted away from Catholicism. Nearly three-quarters of former Catholics who are now unaffiliated (71%) say this, as do more than half of those who have left Catholicism for Protestantism (54%).
Majorities of former Catholics who are now unaffiliated also cite having stopped believing in Catholicism’s teachings overall (65%) or dissatisfaction with Catholic teachings about abortion and homosexuality (56%), and almost half (48%) cite dissatisfaction with church teachings about birth control, as reasons for leaving Catholicism. These reasons are cited less commonly by former Catholics who have become Protestant; 50% say they stopped believing in Catholicism’s teachings, 23% say they differed with the Catholic Church on issues such as abortion and homosexuality, and only 16% say they were unhappy with Catholic teachings on birth control.
Perhaps not surprisingly, those who express dissatisfaction with the Catholic Church’s teachings on birth control, among those who are currently unaffiliated and Protestant alike, overwhelmingly contend that the Catholic Church is too strict and conservative on this issue; very few say the Catholic Church is too relaxed and liberal about birth control.
Among former Catholics who are now Protestant, 71% say they left Catholicism because their spiritual needs were not being met, making this the most commonly cited reason for leaving the Catholic Church among this group. A similar number (70%) say they left the Catholic Church because they found another religion they liked more. Having found a religion they liked more than Catholicism is cited by almost equal numbers of formerly Catholic evangelical and mainline Protestants (70% and 69%, respectively). By contrast, lack of spiritual fulfillment is a particularly common impetus for leaving Catholicism among those who are now members of evangelical Protestant churches (78%) but is cited less often by former Catholics who have become members of mainline Protestant churches (57%).
The survey finds other interesting differences between those who have left Catholicism for evangelical and mainline Protestant churches. Most converts to evangelicalism (55%), for instance, say that dissatisfaction with teachings about the Bible was a reason for leaving the Catholic Church, compared with only 16% among current mainline Protestants. The two groups also express concerns of a different nature about the Bible. Most evangelicals who left Catholicism over concerns about teachings on the Bible (46% of all formerly Catholic evangelicals) say the Catholic Church did not view the Bible literally enough. Mainline Protestants, however, are not only much less likely to say concerns about the Bible led them away from Catholicism, but those who were led away by such concerns are also much more evenly divided as to whether the church viewed the Bible too literally (6%) or not literally enough (8%).
Mainline Protestants are much more likely than their evangelical counterparts to say they left Catholicism because they married a non-Catholic (44% vs. 22%) or due to dissatisfaction with the priests at their parish (39% vs. 23%). In addition, nearly one-third of formerly Catholic mainline Protestants (31%) say unhappiness with the Catholic Church’s treatment of women led them away from Catholicism, compared with only 11% among evangelicals.
Overall, fewer than three-in-ten former Catholics agree that the clergy sexual abuse scandal played a role in their departure from the Catholic Church (27% among those now unaffiliated, 21% among those now Protestant). About one-in-five former Catholics (19% of those now unaffiliated and 20% of those now Protestant) say they left Catholicism due to discomfort with the feeling of community at their parish. Those who take this view tend to say their parish did not have enough sense of community. Significant minorities, however, say their parish community was too close, with too many people involved in other people’s business.

Please actually open up the PDF at the above link and look at the section starting on p23. There are some tables there that I don't want to take the time to reproduce here that break the numbers down further.

Bottom line is that it appears to me that most who left were either not properly catechized or were CINOs to begin with. To the CINOs, I say "have fun." But we can fix the problem with the ones who weren't properly catechized.

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