The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life recently released a study on religious affiliation in America. It found among other things, that "the Roman Catholic Church has lost more members than any faith tradition because of affiliation swapping….While nearly one in three Americans were raised Catholic, fewer than one in four say they're Catholic today. That means roughly 10% of Americans are ex-Catholics." Thanks to immigration (more than half of recent immigrants to the U.S are Catholic), the Catholic Church still constitutes about 25% of the U.S. population. One in three Catholics in the U.S. is Hispanic.
The survey sampled 35,500 thousand people. One could argue that the sample size in a country of some 300+ million was too small. However, the survey generally confirms what many observers of the Catholic scene in the U.S. already knew – at least anecdotally.
Here in Central Florida, the numbers of Catholics are growing. Since I have been bishop I have established eight new parishes or missions. This Easter Season, more than 1,000 people will join the Catholic Church here in our Diocese. Our pews are full – because of the continuing influx of people to our area, either from the North (the snowbirds moving to a warmer climate) or from the South (Puerto Ricans and immigrants from Latin America and the Caribbean). It is tempting to glibly dismiss the Pew study. However, given the constant arrival of newcomers we might not as easily notice the members who quietly defect.
Why are we losing people? A possible explanation – but one I think is too facile – is that many adult Catholics have left the Church because of the phenomenally poor religious instruction received by baby boomers and their children over the last 40 years. This certainly plays a role – more often than not the former Catholic who joins another religious denomination did not understand why he or she was Catholic in the first place. But that cannot be the sole explanation. In fact, many of the immigrant Catholics who built the Church here in the U.S. a century ago were poorly educated in their faith and in just about everything else. However, they kept the faith – and built the schools that handed on both a solid education and the faith to their children. These immigrants brought with them a culture that helped shape their faith and forged a collective identity in which Catholicism was part of a distinctive way of life – a way of life that revolved around the parish.
Something changed though when their children and grandchildren entered into the American mainstream. Catholics were assimilated – or absorbed – into American culture resulting in an erosion of Catholic identity. The parish play a lesser role in their lives. The strong individualism of our culture undermines the sense of a "collective identity". And thus Americans become individual "consumers" of religion, picking their religious identity "a la carte" as it were. Churches are seen as merely voluntary organizations and affiliation or non affiliation a matter of personal taste or choice. The attraction of the Evangelical denominations with their emphasis on the therapeutic side of faith seems to bear this out.
What do we do about it? Certainly better catechesis is needed; but, Catholics do not live their faith merely as individuals but as members of a community. Parishes are key to reinforcing Catholic identity and providing a place where people can experience the distinctiveness of Catholic life. Parishes at their best can draw people into a Catholic ethos in a way that does convert them. Most parishes did that well up until the mid-20th century – and many still do. If we want to stem the "leakage" from the Church – and at the same time reach out to the unaffiliated, parish life must be revitalized. As Pope John Paul II said in Novo Millenio Ineunte, the Church must be "the home and school of communion" where each member of Christ's faithful is valued and taken into account and where each is aware of his or her active responsibility for living the faith.
