Vanishing Catholics

According to recent demographic surveys, it seems there are presently 30 million people in the U.S. who identify themselves as “former Catholics.” That figure is both surprising, and, for Catholics, disheartening.

Over the past 50 years or so, a profound change, other than that effected by Vatican II, has taken place in the Catholic Church. It might be described as the phenomenon of “vanishing Catholics.” The Canadian philosopher, Charles Taylor, has identified four major challenges facing the Church today. First on his list is the exodus of young adults from the Church. According to recent demographic surveys, it seems there are presently 30 million people in the U.S. who identify themselves as “former Catholics.” That figure is both surprising, and, for Catholics, disheartening. It represents a little less than 10 percent of the total population of this country. It also means that had those persons remained Catholic, approximately one in three Americans would be identified as Catholic. Only two religious groups represent a larger percentage of the U.S. population: Protestants (cumulatively) and current Catholics.

This phenomenon is disheartening not only for bishops and priests, but also for faithful Catholics generally. Many older Catholics are saddened at the sight of their children and grandchildren abandoning the Church.

Questions naturally arise. What has caused such a massive defection? How might one account for this phenomenon? It hardly seems possible that any single factor could explain a phenomenon of such magnitude. Various reasons for people leaving the Church are well-known. Many of them have been operative from the earliest times of Christianity. In his first letter to Timothy, St. Paul reminds him that “The Spirit has explicitly said that during the last times some will desert the faith and pay attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines …” (1 Tm 4:1-7). In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul speaks of dissensions and divisions among the faithful (1 Cor 1:10-16).

From the first centuries up to modern times, there have been doctrinal differences (heresies) which led to great numbers separating themselves from the Roman Catholic Church. Many others have left the Church for what can be described as practical reasons, rather than doctrinal differences.

Among the latter, there are many who separated themselves from the Church because of marriage problems. There are those who left because they became greatly dissatisfied with inadequate preaching, uninviting liturgy, and minimal hospitality in their parishes. It seems worth noting that expecting church attendance and public worship to be therapeutically satisfying often leads to disappointment and eventual alienation.

Not a few have left the Church because of real or perceived mistreatment by bishops or pastors. Reactions have a way of becoming overreactions. An overreaction to clericalism and paternalism in the Church resulted in autonomy becoming absolute. Evelyn Underhill offered a helpful analogy in this regard. She likened the Church to the Post Office. Both provide an essential service, but it is always possible to find an incompetent and annoying clerk behind the counter. Persons who expect all representatives of the Church to live up to the ideals proposed by the Church will typically become disillusioned and leave. Persons with such expectations would have left the Church of the Holy Apostles.

Most recently, a cause for many leaving the Church is the scandal of clergy sexual abuse. This has been a stumbling block not only for those directly affected, but for Catholics generally. Because of the questionable role played by a number of bishops, their moral authority is diminished. The time when bishops could command is past. Now, they can only hope to persuade and invite. Loyalty to bishops had been widely identified with loyalty to the Church. As the former loyalty diminished, so did the latter.

Clearly there are times when the Church is more of an obstacle than a help to faith. At Vatican II, the Council Fathers pointed out that the Church is always in danger of concealing, rather than revealing, the authentic features of Christ. Often enough, members of the Church’s leadership have been guilty of a sin typical of many religious teachers—namely, being more concerned about preservation of their authority than about the truth.

While specific reasons can be cited, it is helpful to recognize several underlying attitudes that are operative. (1) There is an anti-dogmatic spirit which is suspicious of the Church’s emphasis on fidelity to traditional teachings. (2) There is the widespread belief that one can be free to ignore, deny, or minimize one or more received doctrines without feeling compelled to break with the Church. (3) There is also the belief that, guided by their own conscience, regardless of how that matches—or fails to match—generally accepted Catholic teaching, persons can develop their own understanding of what it means to be Catholic. Someone has coined a phrase that describes persons with those attitudes, calling them “cafeteria Catholics,” i.e., those who pick and choose what to accept of official Catholic teaching and ignore the rest.

Two questions arise in the face of the phenomenon of “vanishing Catholics.” One question is of a more theological and ecclesial level: are those departed to be considered heretics or schismatics? A second question arises at the practical level: how can those who have left be reunited with the Church? Regarding the first question, it is worth noting that, while speaking of dissension and division among the faithful, and of separation from the community of believers, the New Testament does not make a distinction between heresy and schism. Since the definition of the Pope’s primacy of jurisdiction, it is difficult to see how there can be a schism that is not a heresy.

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (§2089), heresy “is the obstinate, post-baptismal denial of some truth which must be believed with divine and Catholic faith, or it is, likewise, an obstinate doubt concerning the same.” Schism is “the refusal of submission to the Roman Pontiff, or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him.” The Theological Dictionary, compiled by Karl Rahner and Herbert Vorgrimler, defines heresy as “primarily an error in matters of faith. The heretic takes a truth out of the organic whole, which is the faith, and because he looks at it in isolation, misunderstands it, or else denies a dogma.” “Schism occurs when a baptized person refuses to be subject to the Pope, or to live in communion with the members of the Church, who are subject to the Pope.”

In any case, given the variety of reasons for people leaving the Church, the degree of separation, and especially assuming good will on the part of those leaving, it is difficult to classify them as heretics or schismatics. Church authorities have the right and the duty to take measures against heresy and schism when those become evident. Clear denial of a dogma cannot be tolerated. But between this and a purely private, material heresy, there are many shades. Not every challenge to accepted theology is heretical. There are many partial non-identifications that endanger faith and unity but do not rise to the level of schism. Nor does every act of disobedience to human laws in the Church imply schism.

While speculative questions about heresy and schism are significant and need to be addressed, they pale in comparison to the practical question of how those departed can be reunited with the Church. That question is as complex as are the reasons for people leaving the Church. That question is further complicated when one addresses the question of the underlying attitudes that are operative.

Obviously, the Church must work at removing any obstacles to reunion. With Vatican II, that work was begun. The Council recognized the Church is semper reformanda, always needing to be reformed. The actual return of individuals requires something more than an adjustment in Church practices or new programs. It is a matter of God touching the individual with his grace.

A final question that can prove troubling is how the massive defection from the Church is to be reconciled with God’s providence. This is simply one of many instances in which we are challenged to believe in an omnipotent God, who is also a loving, provident Father. Providence is not an occasional, intrusive, manipulative presence, but one that is with us both in tragedy and in joy, in the joy that consists not so much in the absence of suffering, as in the awareness of God’s presence. To find the strength to experience calmly the difficulties and trials that come into our lives is a tremendous challenge. If, however, we are able to do that, every event can be “providential.” In a sermon on the feast of the Ascension, Pope Leo the Great said: “For those who abandon themselves to God’s providential love, faith does not fail, hope is not shaken, and charity does not grow cold.”

There can be a very subtle, almost imperceptible temptation to think we know better than God how things should be. We can be like the naive little girl, who, in her prayers, told God that if she were in God’s place, she would make the world better. And God replied: “That is exactly what you should be doing.”

Good stats, and immigration does not totally account for those numbers. The current US population is around 312 Million. So Catholics are about 21% of the US population. Now, the Harris survey that just came out this month shows that today only 74% of Americans express a belief in God. 12% are Atheist and 14% or unsure [Agnostic]

The OP article says that just under 10% of Americans or 30 Million are former Catholics and 68% of Catholics who were born Catholic stay Catholic. 15% of those raised Catholic are Protestant and 14% are unaffiliated with any Church leaving 3% maybe going to non-Christian faith. So 32% of those born Catholic are now not Catholic and lets say those 14% unaffiliated are in that 26% that the Harris Poll indicates are atheist or Agnostic.

14 over 32 = 0.4375 and multiplying that by that 30 Million figure equals 13,125,000 people. If you take away the 15% that are prostestant and use 17/32, you get 53% and that equals 15,937,500 people. Now if you take 26% from the Harris Poll regarding Atheist and Agnostics and multiply that times 312 Million, you get 81,120,000 Americans that are Atheist or Agnostic. So former Catholics represent just over 16% or 20% [depending what you do with the 3% and how you measure it with the 15% of Catholics now Protestant and 14% unaffiliated] of those Americans who are now Atheist or Agnostic, not much different from the overall Catholic population. If you

In addition, what this analysis confirms is that there are 63 to 65 Million americans who are either atheist or agnostic that come from some other Faith Tradition besides Catholicism.

In summary, I go back to what I said earlier, the United States has become much more secular-Liberal in the last 20 or so years. Again, see Harris poll below

http://www.harrisinteractive.com/NewsRoom/HarrisPolls/tabid/447/ctl/ReadCustom%20Default/mid/1508/ArticleId/1353/Default.aspx

It’s a matter of using the entire passage and discussion to obtain the meaning. The John 6 passage on eating and drinking starts out concrete and then the use of similtude to explain the concrete truth. Jesus uses the same method of similtude in John 4 as I shared with gemoftheocean:

John 4:10-24 NASB

Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.” She said to Him, “Sir, You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep; where then do You get that living water? You are not greater than our father Jacob, are You, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself and his sons and his cattle?” Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.”

The woman said to Him, “Sir, give me this water, so I will not be thirsty nor come all the way here to draw.” He said to her, “Go, call your husband and come here.” The woman answered and said, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You have correctly said, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; this you have said truly.” The woman said to Him, “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.

But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”

Luke 18:9-14 blue: He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Not blasphemy. God saves those who throw themselves on the mercy of the court, not those who appeal to works they have done.

Most of our local Catholic churches are filled with indifferent barely interested people who come because of some social reason more than worship.

Really? When I was still attending the local, packed tot he gills, Latin Church, the majority of those in attendance were there to worship and run. The more seasoned members came to fulfill their Sunday obligation. The younger congregants came with children. Missing were the unmarried and/or younger professionals. The "social" activities were rather limited.

I left in search of a reverent liturgy and a community where my God-given abilities might be of use. That journey led me to a Maronite Catholic Church. We are a very small community (less than 100 families) but everyone is asked to participate in one way or another. Since there is only one Divine Liturgy, we come together each week as a "Catholic community", in the truest sense. We know each and every family; when someone is ill or in need, we reach out to assist. After Sunday mass, we gather for refreshments and conversation; each family takes turns supplying the coffee, juice and treats.

Prior to Christmas, a group of us accompanied our pastor as he visited the homebound, those in assisted living and shut ins. At each home, we spent time with the family, sang Christmas carols. prayed and the priest distributed communion. One of the parents brought along her children for the explicit purpose of helping them understand that the parish family extends beyond the boarders of the church. The kids not only enjoyed visiting these families, they also entertained them.

Within this small parish are several ministries, including a women's and men's sodality, a sanctity of life committee, a parish council and other groups, as well. Imagine that, with less than 100 families! There are annual fundraisers, parish picnics, retreats and processions. One member of our congregation, also Latin Rite, was called to religious life and recently professed his temporary vows with the Maronite Monks of Adoration who are all Latin Rite, as well.

Like the Orthodox Church, many of the Eastern Catholic Churches retain their ancient liturgies. The Maronite Catholic Church predates the Latin Church and traces its origin to Antioch, where St. Peter served as bishop before proceeding to Rome.

The point I am trying to make here is that a parish reflects the vision of the pastor. Small parishes, such as mine, pull the community together as a whole but also pose other problems as a result of limited membership. Our pastor is a monastic priest who is also a missionary. He treats the small community as if it were a much larger one, encouraging participation at all levels. He projects outward, as well, into the surrounding community. He also volunteers his services to the Latin Rite community (the bishop has given him Latin faculties). Hence, not only does he serve his parish, he also serves the priestless parishes in the surrounding RC Diocese of Albany .. AND .. reaches out to serve the local community through programs to feed and assist the more disenfranchised. As a result, he draws people home to the Catholic Church.

Still, if one takes the position that Kennedy had, by his public political positions, excommunicated himself, that would not prevent him from having a Catholic Funeral, assuming of course, he made a good Sacrament of Reconciliation/Confession and Act of Contrition towards the end of his life.

Your problem is that there is no evidence Teddy K was repentant. He held both prohomosexual and proabortion positions while having mass at his house.

Even though Canon 915 states: Those who have been excommunicated or interdicted after the imposition or the declaration of a penalty as well as others who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to communion.

But despite the picture RCs often paint of the efficacy of their magisterium, in Rome interpretation is much involved on various levels, and thus the liberal Wuerl could say,

"I stand with the great majority of American bishops and bishops around the world in saying this canon [Canon 915] was never intended to be used this way.'' -- http://www.canonlaw.info/2009/03/abps-wuerl-c-916-burke-cc-915-916-on.html

He wrote to the pope, delivered by Pres. Obama, and the pope wrote back (through a senior Vatican official), out of which Cardinal McCarrick read, in which there was neither any evident penitence by the former or censure from the latter. Instead Kennedy insolently asserted he “never failed to believe and respect the fundamental teachings” of his church, and tried to be a faithful Catholic, etc..

The closest thing we get to any kind of contrition is the ambiguous, “I know that I have been an imperfect human being, but with the help of my faith, I have tried to right my path,” before he goes on to to defend his wonderful works, including fighting discrimination. Not a word of remorse about supporting abortion or promoting homosexual rights - which were part of his fight against discrimination, or promoting indolence and a welfare state.

And all we have from the papal response is no chastisement, but the pope expressing that, "he is particularly grateful for your promise of prayers for him and for the needs of the universal Church," and "invokes upon you the consolation and peace promised by the Risen Savior, and “cordially imparts his Apostolic Blessing as a pledge of wisdom, comfort and strength in the Lord.” (http://www.thebostonpilot.com/articleprint.asp?id=10800/)

Yet according to Canon 1184 §, unless they gave some signs of repentance before death, the following must be deprived of ecclesiastical funerals: 1/ notorious apostates, heretics, and schismatics; 2/ those who chose the cremation of their bodies for reasons contrary to Christian faith; 3/ other manifest sinners who cannot be granted ecclesiastical funerals without public scandal of the faithful. (http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG1104/_P4X.HTM; http://www.ewtn.com/library/liturgy/zlitur280.htm)

Now you can talk all you want about latae sententiae, but if Rome treats such as TRCs (trad. RCs) consider autoexcoms as members in life and in death, then it is obvious that that the TRC interpretation is not what Rome manifestly subscribes to and effectually conveys.

But they attack evangelicals who were once part of the liberal RC church.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. (Matt. 28:19) = a phrase taken out of context.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. (2 Cor 13:13) Douay-Rheims Bible = “All the saints salute you.”
Not the same thing at all.

” I confess to almighty God and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have greatly sinned, (Jas 5:16) in my thoughts and in my words (Jas 3:6) in what I have done and in what I have failed to do, (Rom. 12:16) through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault; therefore I ask blessed Mary ever-Virgin, all the Angels and Saints, and you, my brothers and sisters, to pray for me to the Lord our God.(1Thess 5:25)” = And Protestants are accused of making up stuff by cherry pinking verses? What a joke.

May almighty God have mercy on us, forgive us our sins, and bring us to everlasting life. (1 John 1:9) - in Scripture “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. “

“Amen” For REAL? Scripture references to prove that the word Amen is in the Bible. Like someone doesn’t know?

The rest of it is just as bad. So far, of the examples I looked at, none of them are accurately quoted Scripture with the likely exception of the word “Amen”. Making religious sounding phrases using snippets of Scripture does NOT equate to Scripture reading or having the whole mass *based* on Scripture.

It’s merely making up the mass and then desperately scrabbling to find Scripture verses to support it and claim that it’s the foundation instead of using it to justify the mass.

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