The hidden exodus: Catholics becoming Protestants

Any other institution that lost one-third of its members would want to know why.....

We all have heard stories about why people leave. Parents share stories about their children. Academics talk about their students. Everyone has a friend who has left.

While personal experience can be helpful, social science research forces us to look beyond our circle of acquaintances to see what is going on in the whole church.

The U.S. Religious Landscape Survey by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life has put hard numbers on the anecdotal evidence: One out of every 10 Americans is an ex-Catholic. If they were a separate denomination, they would be the third-largest denomination in the United States, after Catholics and Baptists. One of three people who were raised Catholic no longer identifies as Catholic.

Any other institution that lost one-third of its members would want to know why. But the U.S. bishops have never devoted any time at their national meetings to discussing the exodus. Nor have they spent a dime trying to find out why it is happening.

Thankfully, although the U.S. bishops have not supported research on people who have left the church, the Pew Center has.

Pew’s data shows that those leaving the church are not homogenous. They can be divided into two major groups: those who become unaffiliated and those who become Protestant. Almost half of those leaving the church become unaffiliated and almost half become Protestant. Only about 10 percent of ex-Catholics join non-Christian religions. This article will focus on Catholics who have become Protestant. I am not saying that those who become unaffiliated are not important; I am leaving that discussion to another time.

Why do people leave the Catholic church to become Protestant? Liberal Catholics will tell you that Catholics are leaving because they disagree with the church’s teaching on birth control, women priests, divorce, the bishops’ interference in American politics, etc. Conservatives blame Vatican II, liberal priests and nuns, a permissive culture and the church’s social justice agenda.

One of the reasons there is such disagreement is that we tend to think that everyone leaves for the same reason our friends, relatives and acquaintances have left. We fail to recognize that different people leave for different reasons. People who leave to join Protestant churches do so for different reasons than those who become unaffiliated. People who become evangelicals are different from Catholics who become members of mainline churches.

The principal reasons given by people who leave the church to become Protestant are that their “spiritual needs were not being met” in the Catholic church (71 percent) and they “found a religion they like more” (70 percent). Eighty-one percent of respondents say they joined their new church because they enjoy the religious service and style of worship of their new faith.

In other words, the Catholic church has failed to deliver what people consider fundamental products of religion: spiritual sustenance and a good worship service. And before conservatives blame the new liturgy, only 11 percent of those leaving complained that Catholicism had drifted too far from traditional practices such as the Latin Mass.

Dissatisfaction with how the church deals with spiritual needs and worship services dwarfs any disagreements over specific doctrines. While half of those who became Protestants say they left because they stopped believing in Catholic teaching, specific questions get much lower responses. Only 23 percent said they left because of the church’s teaching on abortion and homosexuality; only 23 percent because of the church’s teaching on divorce; only 21 percent because of the rule that priests cannot marry; only 16 percent because of the church’s teaching on birth control; only 16 percent because of the way the church treats women; only 11 percent because they were unhappy with the teachings on poverty, war and the death penalty.

The data shows that disagreement over specific doctrines is not the main reason Catholics become Protestants. We also have lots of survey data showing that many Catholics who stay disagree with specific church teachings. Despite what theologians and bishops think, doctrine is not that important either to those who become Protestant or to those who stay Catholic.

People are not becoming Protestants because they disagree with specific Catholic teachings; people are leaving because the church does not meet their spiritual needs and they find Protestant worship service better.

Nor are the people becoming Protestants lazy or lax Christians. In fact, they attend worship services at a higher rate than those who remain Catholic. While 42 percent of Catholics who stay attend services weekly, 63 percent of Catholics who become Protestants go to church every week. That is a 21 percentage-point difference.

Catholics who became Protestant also claim to have a stronger faith now than when they were children or teenagers. Seventy-one percent say their faith is “very strong,” while only 35 percent and 22 percent reported that their faith was very strong when they were children and teenagers, respectively. On the other hand, only 46 percent of those who are still Catholic report their faith as “very strong” today as an adult.

Thus, both as believers and as worshipers, Catholics who become Protestants are statistically better Christians than those who stay Catholic. We are losing the best, not the worst.

Some of the common explanations of why people leave do not pan out in the data. For example, only 21 percent of those becoming Protestant mention the sex abuse scandal as a reason for leaving. Only 3 percent say they left because they became separated or divorced.

If you believed liberals, most Catholics who leave the church would be joining mainline churches, like the Episcopal church. In fact, almost two-thirds of former Catholics who join a Protestant church join an evangelical church. Catholics who become evangelicals and Catholics who join mainline churches are two very distinct groups. We need to take a closer look at why each leaves the church.

Fifty-four percent of both groups say that they just gradually drifted away from Catholicism. Both groups also had almost equal numbers (82 percent evangelicals, 80 percent mainline) saying they joined their new church because they enjoyed the worship service. But compared to those who became mainline Protestants, a higher percentage of those becoming evangelicals said they left because their spiritual needs were not being met (78 percent versus 57 percent) and that they had stopped believing in Catholic teaching (62 percent versus 20 percent). They also cited the church’s teaching on the Bible (55 percent versus 16 percent) more frequently as a reason for leaving. Forty-six percent of these new evangelicals felt the Catholic church did not view the Bible literally enough. Thus, for those leaving to become evangelicals, spiritual sustenance, worship services and the Bible were key. Only 11 percent were unhappy with the church’s teachings on poverty, war, and the death penalty Ñ the same percentage as said they were unhappy with the church’s treatment of women. Contrary to what conservatives say, ex-Catholics are not flocking to the evangelicals because they think the Catholic church is politically too liberal. They are leaving to get spiritual nourishment from worship services and the Bible.

Looking at the responses of those who join mainline churches also provides some surprising results. For example, few (20 percent) say they left because they stopped believing in Catholic teachings. However, when specific issues were mentioned in the questionnaire, more of those joining mainline churches agreed that these issues influenced their decision to leave the Catholic church. Thirty-one percent cited unhappiness with the church’s teaching on abortion and homosexuality, women, and divorce and remarriage, and 26 percent mentioned birth control as a reason for leaving. Although these numbers are higher than for Catholics who become evangelicals, they are still dwarfed by the number (57 percent) who said their spiritual needs were not met in the Catholic church.

Thus, those becoming evangelicals were more generically unhappy than specifically unhappy with church teaching, while those who became mainline Protestant tended to be more specifically unhappy than generically unhappy with church teaching. The unhappiness with the church’s teaching on poverty, war and the death penalty was equally low for both groups (11 percent for evangelicals; 10 percent for mainline).

What stands out in the data on Catholics who join mainline churches is that they tend to cite personal or familiar reasons for leaving more frequently than do those who become evangelicals. Forty-four percent of the Catholics who join mainline churches say that they married someone of the faith they joined, a number that trumps all doctrinal issues. Only 22 percent of those who join the evangelicals cite this reason.

Perhaps after marrying a mainline Christian and attending his or her church’s services, the Catholic found the mainline services more fulfilling than the Catholic service. And even if they were equally attractive, perhaps the exclusion of the Protestant spouse from Catholic Communion makes the more welcoming mainline church attractive to an ecumenical couple.

Those joining mainline communities also were more likely to cite dissatisfaction of the Catholic clergy (39 percent) than were those who became evangelical (23 percent). Those who join mainline churches are looking for a less clerically dominated church.

There are many lessons that we can learn from the Pew data, but I will focus on only three.

First, those who are leaving the church for Protestant churches are more interested in spiritual nourishment than doctrinal issues. Tinkering with the wording of the creed at Mass is not going to help. No one except the Vatican and the bishops cares whether Jesus is “one in being” with the Father or “consubstantial” with the Father. That the hierarchy thinks this is important shows how out of it they are.

While the hierarchy worries about literal translations of the Latin text, people are longing for liturgies that touch the heart and emotions. More creativity with the liturgy is needed, and that means more flexibility must be allowed. If you build it, they will come; if you do not, they will find it elsewhere. The changes that will go into effect this Advent will make matters worse, not better.

Second, thanks to Pope Pius XII, Catholic scripture scholars have had decades to produce the best thinking on scripture in the world. That Catholics are leaving to join evangelical churches because of the church teaching on the Bible is a disgrace. Too few homilists explain the scriptures to their people. Few Catholics read the Bible.

The church needs a massive Bible education program. The church needs to acknowledge that understanding the Bible is more important than memorizing the catechism. If we could get Catholics to read the Sunday scripture readings each week before they come to Mass, it would be revolutionary. If you do not read and pray the scriptures, you are not an adult Christian. Catholics who become evangelicals understand this.

Finally, the Pew data shows that two-thirds of Catholics who become Protestants do so before they reach the age of 24. The church must make a preferential option for teenagers and young adults or it will continue to bleed. Programs and liturgies that cater to their needs must take precedence over the complaints of fuddy-duddies and rubrical purists.

Current religious education programs and teen groups appear to have little effect on keeping these folks Catholic, according to the Pew data, although those who attend a Catholic high school do appear to stay at a higher rate. More research is needed to find out what works and what does not.

The Catholic church is hemorrhaging members. It needs to acknowledge this and do more to understand why. Only if we acknowledge the exodus and understand it will we be in a position to do something about it.

[roamer_1:] If one proposes that one's church trumps the very words of YHWH, all that can be left is incredulity.... One cannot step back from that and find common ground, because if you truly believe that, then there is no common ground.

Do you not believe Jesus Christ is God incarnate?

Yes I do... But I find that proof in the Old Testament. Can you?

[roamer_1:] Do you REALLY want to claim that any edifice of man has authority over that?

The Church is not "of man." I should think you would know that....

The 'Assembly' reaches far back before the Roman church ever was. The proofs offered to identify the Roman church as 'THE Church' are very poor, and proofs against it abound. So even if there is authority over the Word to be found in such an edifice (which I deny entirely), I am more than skeptical of the claim. The Temple priesthood, particularly the Pharisees, thought precisely the same way - And that didn't turn out well at all.

The purpose of the priesthood (in this context) has always been to safeguard the Word, not to add or diminish it. That is not power or authority OVER it, but rather, that authority is found in submission to it.

I know that is a lot of incoming, but if you read all my response thru, you should have seen that holding to Scripture as the supreme and sufficient authority does not restrict the Word of God to being only written (James White, among others, states that “The Bible is not exhaustive in every detail. John 21:25 speaks to the fact that there are many things that Jesus said and did that are not recorded in John, or, in fact, in any book in the world because the whole books of the world could not contain it.” (http://vintage.aomin.org/cathan.html)

If Jesus said, it, then then it is the word of God, thus claiming that only what it in the Bible can be the word of God is a misunderstanding of the the prima Scriptura or SS position.

However, as i explained, this is not contrary to Scripture being the Divinely established assured Word of God, and thus the supreme authority on Truth, and providing what is needed, both in the clear or the derived sense, for salvation and growth in grace.

In contrast is the position that the church draws its authority directly from God, with whatever sources it invokes for support only having authority because she gave it to them.

"Re-wording will not remedy making the thread "about" individual Freepers, e.g. looking for motive."

Normally I would presume that the inclusion of any personal pronoun in a posting is personalizing it. However, I have been the object and subject of many, many posts that have been pretty derogatory. Do you rigorously enforce all such posts or only respond to abuse complaints? Can I depend upon you to police these threads and ensure that they again not become about me?

May the Peace of Christ be with you.

[roamer_1:] First and foremost the Father explicitly commands us against cannibalism and the drinking of blood... So your interpretation must needfully be incorrect, to say the least.

I suppose that is why you would have been among those to desert Him at the synagogue in Capernaum.

I would hope to be among those who thought, "Why is this wonderful Rabbi suddenly spouting Mithra-ism? Certainly there is some lesson here..." And that I would stick around for the other shoe to drop. You know the part where He said He was speaking of 'spirit'...

It isn't a reach to conclude that His Body (as the Word incarnate) is the written Word (how can they be different?) and His Blood is the covering of the Covenant He was offering. So the bread is to be found in the pages of the Bible, and the wine is to be found in the participation in the Covenant. KEEP and DO.

I certainly would not be among those who thought He was sanctioning cannibalism against the Word of YHWH.

If Jesus said, it, then then it is the word of God, thus claiming that only what it in the Bible can be the word of God is a misunderstanding of the the prima Scriptura or SS position.

I see.

Thank you for the clarification.

Then we are in agreement on the "gotta be in the Bible" doctrine, if not the validity of Sola Scriptura.

You aren't really suggesting that we should observe Kosher dietary practices, stone adulterers and those who work on the sabbath, perform animal sacrifices, refuse to eat with Gentiles, and the other 600+ laws of the Halakha are you?

It isn't I who suggested it, but the Master Himself:

Mat 5:17 Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfil.
Mat 5:18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law, till all things be accomplished.
Mat 5:19 Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
Mat 5:20 For I say unto you, that except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven.

(e-Sword:KJV)

Note that I am not advocating Judaism as your words imply - but the Master preached the Torah, and that is undeniable.

It isn't a reach to conclude that His Body (as the Word incarnate) is the written Word (how can they be different?) and His Blood is the covering of the Covenant He was offering.

If that's not a "reach" then reach has no meaning.

Let me get this straight. You're willing to believe Jesus' body is a book, but you're not willing to believe his body is a piece of bread, even though he says exactly that....

“For something to be “making it personal” it must be speaking to another Freeper, personally.

“Protestants are heretics” is not making it personal. “You are a heretic” is making it personal. “Catholics worship Mary” is not making it personal. “You worship Mary” is making it personal.”

~ ~ ~

Thank you R.M, I understand finally. Other forums, this is not the case. I’ll make general comments, it’s hard to speak from the heart and remain general but I shall try. I want so much to change the view on the faith of Protestants here.

Now I understand why there are so many 3rd person replies
in this thread, people have to get their negative personal
comment about whoever in some way. All flowery but they
use a knife, it’s sad.

The first command to not eat of the blood came BEFORE the Law.

Genesis 9:4 But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.

It was taught in the Law and the reason for it is given; it is for atonement, not consumption.

The Council of Jerusalem, the one that Catholics claim Peter presided over, said this, reiterating the command to abstain from eating of blood. It rates right up there with sacrificing to idols and sexual immorality.

Acts 15:28-29 28 For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay on you no greater burden than these requirements: 29 that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from what has been strangled, and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. Farewell.”

Scripture cannot contradict itself. If God so clearly commands something, wrong does not become right.

The interpretation of the teaching that we are to eat the flesh and blood of Jesus to mean His actual, literal flesh and blood violates tons of Scripture and Scriptural principles, many of which have already been demonstrated here on this thread.

The interpretation of the teaching as being that it is Spirit and truth, and that the bread and wine are symbolic representations of Jesus broken body and spilled blood gives NO problem in regard to contradicting the rest of the body of Scripture. On the contrary, it fits very well and makes plenty of sense.

Salvation is not by physical actions that force spiritual realities. Salvation is by grace through faith in Christ and it always has been. It was never by keeping the Law and the system of sacrifices.

Genuine miracles still happen.

However, lying signs and wonders can happen too.

This is an interesting case study......

Mystics of the Church
Sister Magdalena of the Cross -The devil’s saint for 40 years & her escape from an evil pact through extraordinary repentance

http://www.mysticsofthechurch.com/2011/12/sister-magdalena-of-cross-nun-who-made.html

Every time I read your late night comments, I am blessed! Thank you so much for proving that God's word IS what He says it is. I laugh at those who accuse others of "worshiping" the Bible in a vain attempt to cause them to question the place of the Scriptures in the life of a Christian. Just as our savior Jesus Christ used "it is written" to combat the temptations of the devil, so we can as well by using His example because, as you said, it is the ONLY offensive weapon we are given in our spiritual armor. I love what the psalmist says:

The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.
The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart: the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes.
The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring for ever: the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.
More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold: sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.
Moreover by them is thy servant warned: and in keeping of them there is great reward. (Psalm 19:7-11)

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