The 'had it' Catholics

THE NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER

Oct. 11, 2010

Patty Fitzpatrick spent years wrestling with Catholicism, mustering the will to show up at church with her husband and two children, pushing back against teachings she didn’t agree with and attitudes about women that made Sunday Mass a weekly occasion for anger. Pope John Paul II’s pronouncement that women would never be ordained and that Catholics were forbidden to even think or speak about such an eventuality sent her over the edge.

She started meeting with a small group of other angry and distressed Catholic women in the Kansas City, Mo., area. Ultimately, she tired of complaining about the church, stopped going, and began attending St. Andrew Christian Church in nearby Olathe, Kan., a Disciples of Christ congregation. She’s never looked back.

Fitzpatrick was later joined by her husband, Jim, a lifelong and devout Catholic who said his loyalty was finally worn down when a new bishop in the Kansas City-St. Joseph diocese began dictating changes in liturgy, requiring such things as chalices made of precious metals, moving laity farther from the altar and prohibiting priests from leaving the altar during the kiss of peace. Yet he describes his move from St. Francis Xavier Parish in Kansas City as gradual and occurring over time, with no one thing triggering his exit.

The Fitzpatricks fit the profile of the “had it” Catholics who are leaving the church and either dropping out of organized religion altogether or finding refuge in other denominations.

In working on the Emerging Church series, it was easy to develop the impression that the church is hemorrhaging people and to form the question about what it means to the future of the church. Every diocese, it seems, has its “parish of last resort,” and every city of any size seems to have its Disciples of Christ, Episcopal, Lutheran, Presbyterian or Unitarian Universalist congregation that benefits from the Catholic fallout.

A study released in 2008 by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life appears to support that common wisdom. It reported that while Americans in general “change religious affiliation early and often,” Catholicism has especially suffered from the trend, experiencing “the greatest net loss” of any major religious group.

The picture, it turns out, is more complex than the bare figures might indicate. But the figures, however they are viewed, are alarming: Those who have left Catholicism outnumber those who have joined the church by an almost four-to-one margin. Slightly more than 10 percent of American adults (10.1 percent) have left the Catholic church after having been raised Catholic. At the same time, only 2.6 percent of adults have joined the Catholic church after having been raised in another denomination or faith.

The adult population of the United States was 228.1 million in 2008. So if one in 10 U.S. adults were former Catholics, that 22.8 million would make ex-Catholics, if one considered them a denomination, the second-largest in the country behind Catholics, who list 68.1 million members, according to the National Council of Churches’ 2010 Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches. The ex-Catholics would far outnumber the next largest denomination, Southern Baptists, who claim 16.2 million adherents.

While 68 percent of those born Catholic remain in the church, the nearly 23 million ex-Catholics, according to Pew, are almost evenly divided between those who are unaffiliated (14 percent) and those who are now Protestant (15 percent). Three percent of those who have left are now members of another faith.

Leaving at young age

Forty-eight percent of Catholics who are now unaffiliated, according to Pew, left the church before reaching age 18. The same goes for a third of those now Protestant.

“Among both groups, an additional three in 10 left the Catholic church as young adults between ages 18 and 23.” Only a fifth of those who are now unaffiliated and one-third who are now Protestant left after turning 24.

In other words, a great deal of the drain from Catholicism is occurring among those who are much younger than Vatican II-era Catholics and their long-standing debates over the direction of the church.

A large majority (71 percent) of former Catholics who are now unaffiliated say the move from Catholicism occurred as a gradual drifting away from the church. The same goes for 54 percent of those who left for a Protestant denomination.

What all of this means to the future of Catholicism is difficult to determine. According to a spokesperson for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, no one at the conference is studying the phenomenon. Perhaps this massive exodus is not ringing more alarm bells because Catholics are in the same predicament as almost all other mainline Christian denominations. One of the central findings of the Pew study is that we are an incredibly mobile population of believers. About half of American adults have changed religious affiliation at least once during their lives, according to that report.

In the Catholic world, even though tens of millions have exited the church, the bottom line hasn’t changed much. The 2010 figures published by the National Council of Churches show the total Catholic population at 68.1 million, up 1.49 percent over 2009.

Much of that increase, of course, is due to immigration.

In her assessment of the most current figures, the Rev. Eileen W. Lindner, editor of the annual National Council of Churches yearbook, said that the “largest plurality of immigrants to the U.S. in the last 50 years have been Christian in their religious affiliation” and that the influx of “robust Christian communities among new immigrants” has profoundly affected the Christian faith community in the United States.

Mark Gray, a research associate at the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University in Washington, paints a kind of too-big-to-fail scenario.

First, he points out in response to the Pew survey, the Catholic church’s 68 percent retention rate of childhood members is “greater than the retention rate of the unaffiliated and is comparable with or greater than” that of other religious groups.

The Catholic number draws so much attention, he said, because it is huge. As a bit of sociological data, said Gray, the finding was not surprising. Researchers have known about this exodus for some time. Some of it may be explained by the decline in participation in civic and other traditional organizations that the general culture has experienced since the 1960s, Gray said.

Sacramental data worrisome

What really concerns Gray, however, is the “sacramental data,” the numbers that show a falling rate in baptisms, some of which is related to a falling rate of fertility, but some of which is also linked to the exodus of Catholics. The drop in the number receiving later sacraments -- first Communion, first confession and marriage -- is even more problematic, he said, because those numbers indicate that parents aren’t following up with sacraments later in childhood. “Marriage is one of the [sacraments] most strongly affected. The number of marriages is so much lower than the number of the Catholics in church” would indicate. “It’s not that Catholics aren’t being married,” said Gray, “it’s that they are choosing to marry outside the church.”

He noted that key generational differences also show a pattern.

In the Vatican II generation, born between 1943 and 1960, 91 percent were confirmed after receiving first Communion and first confession. Confirmation is seen as an important marker for showing decline in reception of sacraments.

In the post-Vatican II generation, born 1961-81, or Generation X, the number confirmed had dropped to 79 percent.

Among the Millennial generation, born 1982 or later, only 69 percent had been confirmed.

Although the Catholic bottom line may be stable thanks to immigration, there is clearly a “lack of shepherding young Catholics into the faith,” said Gray.

If loosening connections to traditional institutions explains a lot of the drift away from Catholicism and among other denominations, it doesn’t explain everything. Among those former Catholics now unaffiliated, according to the Pew study, 56 percent said they were unhappy with teachings on abortion and homosexuality; 48 percent were unhappy with teachings on birth control; 39 percent were unhappy with how the church treated women; and 33 percent were unhappy with teachings on divorce and remarriage. Among those who became Protestants, 70 percent said they found a religion they liked more; 43 percent were unhappy with church teachings about the Bible; and 32 percent were dissatisfied with the atmosphere at Catholic worship services.

Lower in the rankings of reasons for leaving (percentages ranged from low teens to mid-20s) were the clergy sex abuse scandal; clerical celibacy; married someone from a different faith; dissatisfaction with clergy; and unhappy with teachings on poverty, war and the death penalty.

So, while the “churn” in the Catholic world may be no different percentage-wise from that of other denominations, the fact that the Catholic universe is so large means that the percentages represent millions for whom dissatisfaction with church teachings and practice were among the reasons for leaving.

The Rev. Gail Greenwell is rector of St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church, also in eastern Kansas and a large congregation (1,100 families) by Protestant standards. She estimates that 50 to 70 percent of 85 to 100 new members each year either come from the Catholic church or have a spouse who is Catholic. She includes herself in the latter category -- her husband is a former Catholic.

She said groups of new adult members attend classes and one of the first questions asked is what denomination they previously attended. “The largest group is always Catholic.”

She said that the percentage of Catholics has remained fairly constant over her 10 years as an ordained minister, most of which was spent in the San Francisco area. She’s been in Kansas for the past three years.

Anecdotally, she said, she sees two trends. Among younger women, who often seem to be attracted to the idea of female leadership, some are distressed over the way in which the church has handled the sex abuse crisis. “Young people seem more interested in transparency.”

At the same time she is seeing older women, often single women of around 50, who say they miss “my old Catholic church” and are attracted to the congregation’s weekly traditional high Mass, with full choir, incense, traditional hymnody, full procession, full vestments -- and a woman presiding.

Some convert from Catholicism, she said, after attending weddings or funerals and encountering the Episcopal church’s more open approach to Eucharist -- everyone is welcome to receive -- and the lack of restrictions on those who may be divorced and remarried, often a point of contention in the Catholic church.

That same kind of openness and inclusive welcome, as well as a highly collegial approach to determining the direction of the church, were among the attractions that drew the Fitzpatricks to St. Andrew, which they describe as a small (with 400 families) congregation that is fairly homogeneous in its liberal outlook. Another attraction was the presence of a former priest friend, Tom Minges, who had presided at their wedding in 1985, the same year he left the priesthood. Minges is married and has been an associate pastor at St. Andrew for about the past four years.

After leaving the Catholic church, Patty Fitzpatrick began seriously developing a business that had been suggested to her by a Catholic liturgist friend: making vestments for women.

It was a good fit for someone with a degree in fashion merchandising from the University of Missouri in Columbia and years of experience in the retail business. WomenSpirit, Vestments for Women, now employs 10 people, owns a building in North Kansas City, and produces 2,500-3,000 robes and albs a year as well as clergy shirts and other garments. One of her earliest customers, a female Episcopal priest, was in search of something more fitted. “When I have my alb on with cincture,” she told Patty, “I look like a sack of flour with a rope tied around.”

The business has recently opened a men’s line, called Abiding Spirit, for mostly Protestant ministers who would like an alternative to buying from Catholic bookstores and suppliers.

The couple speaks enthusiastically of St. Andrew’s social justice emphasis and its many ministries. Even though it’s a suburban church, it has a strong presence in urban areas serving dinner, distributing clothing and other services. It also has a migrant workers’ outreach project. “It’s just like a Catholic church,” said Patty, “but it’s not.”

[Tom Roberts is NCR editor at large. His e-mail address is troberts@ncronline.org.]

National Catholic Reporter article

Ten mega-trends shaping the Catholic church

Posted on Dec 22, 2006 10:19am CST.

{There were follow-up articles listings five 'forgotten' trends and then finally an article adding 'ecology. Unfortunate my server is not downloading these archived documents. Rosemary}

Christmas is a season of giving, and in a rather self-serving application of that spirit, this week I'm asking readers to give me something. Specifically, I'm asking for reactions to my list of the 10 most important "mega-trends" in Catholicism today, which appears below.

My next book is titled "The Upside Down Church," a sort of sneak preview of Catholic history in the 21st century. I outline a series of mega-trends which I believe are turning the church on its head, especially with respect to the dominant paradigms in the 40-plus years since the close of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). In order for that analysis to hold water, however, I have to identify these mega-trends correctly.

By "mega-trend," I mean a deep impulse shaping Catholic thought and life at the universal level, a sort of "tectonic plate" whose shifts lie beneath the fault lines and upheavals of the present. I have in mind not single issues, but currents of history which cause some issues to rise in importance and others to fall. A mega-trend, by the way, does not have to be specifically Catholic, but rather something that affects Catholicism in a significant way. For example, the rise of Islam, especially its more radical forms, certainly belongs on the list.

My request is this: Read this list, and ponder it. Are there major forces I've neglected? Are there items here that don't belong? Does this list correspond with your own sense of what's happening in the church?

Some readers may want to react using the "comments" box below, which will allow a conversation to develop in this space. Others may not want to share their thoughts with the rest of the world, but wouldn't mind passing them along to me. If that's the case, address them to jallen@ncronline.org. Either way, I will be grateful.

The list is not organized in order of importance.

One: The North/South Shift
In 1900, there were 459 million Catholics in the world, 392 million of whom lived in Europe and North America. Christianity 100 years ago remained an overwhelmingly white, first world phenomenon. By 2000, there were 1.1 billion Catholics, with just 380 million in Europe and North America, and the rest, 720 million, in the global South. Africa alone went from 1.9 million Catholics in 1900 to 130 million in 2000, a growth rate of almost 7,000 percent. This is the most rapid and sweeping demographic transformation of Catholicism in its 2,000 year history. Sao Paolo, Jakarta and Nairobi will become what Leuvein, Milan and Paris were in the Counter Reformation period, meaning major centers of pastoral and intellectual energy. Different experiences and priorities will set the Catholic agenda as leaders from Africa, Asia and Latin America rise through the system, reshaping the texture of church life.

Two: Quest for Catholic Identity
Another major force is the relentless press for a stronger sense of Catholic identity, an impulse felt in virtually every area, from liturgy to education, from religious orders to the church's engagement with secular politics. In his famous homily 24 hours before his election as pope, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger laid out what he saw as the central challenge facing the church: a "dictatorship of relativism," meaning the rejection of objective truth. Like John Paul II before him, Benedict is keenly concerned that Catholics do not assimilate to this broader secular mentality. As the practical translation of this imperative, the church has seen a growing emphasis over the last 25 years on what sociologists call the "politics of identity" -- efforts to reinforce distinctively Roman Catholic language, practices and belief systems, our markers of difference in a rapidly homogenizing world. The emphasis on identity cuts across debates large and small, from whether theologians should have a mandatum from a bishop certifying their orthodoxy, to whether lay people should be allowed to purify the sacred vessels after Mass.

Three: The Rise of Islam
I was tempted to simply write "Regensburg," and leave it at that. If the importance of Islam to the church wasn't already clear, the aftermath of Benedict XVI's Sept. 12 lecture at the University of Regensburg dispelled any doubt. In the same way that the terrorist attacks of 9/11 put Islam, especially its radical currents, at the center of global consciousness, the "9/12" of Regensburg did it for the Catholic church. Especially in the wake of 9/12, Islam is coming to play the role for Catholicism once occupied by Communism, meaning the church's chief ideological rival on the world stage, the great question mark around which many debates revolve. As with Communism, attitudes towards Islam are often markers for deeper options on issues such as the Christian identity of Europe, the limits of inter-faith dialogue, the nature of missionary efforts, and the fate of Christians in the Arab world. Given that Benedict seems determined to take a more challenging stance in Catholic/Muslim relations on both terrorism and religious freedom, there is likely to be further drama ahead.

Four: The Movements
The term "movement" is used loosely (and, in some cases, imprecisely) to refer to a wide variety of new groups in the 20th century, primarily composed of laity: Sant'Egidio, the Neocatechumenate, Focolare, Communion and Liberation, Opus Dei, L'Arche, Schönstatt, Regnum Christi, and others. Though they remain niche phenomena, the movements nevertheless have a high profile due to their passion, their commitment, and the strong patronage they enjoyed under John Paul II. With their visibility and reach expanding, they will increasingly set a tone in terms of the lay apostolate. While it's something of a myth that the movements are predominantly "conservative" (Sant'Egidio and L'Arche, for example, don't fit the bill), they do have a common thread in that their activity is directed more ad extra than ad intra; that is, they're more concerned with changing the world than changing the church. In that sense, the growth of the movements is likely to produce a more outward-looking sense of the lay role; the model of an "empowered" Catholic lay person will not be primarily a DRE or liturgist, but a lawyer or bus driver or stay-at-home mother, striving to transform the secular world from the inside out.

Five: The Biotech Revolution
Given the dizzying pace of scientific change, Catholicism faces a whole new series of ethical headaches. What are the limits, for example, to genetic manipulation of human beings? Which breakthroughs in stem cell research pass doctrinal muster, such as "altered nuclear transfer"? What about calls for "embryo adoption," meaning allowing women (even unwed women, or women in same-sex relationships) to bring embryos to term which would otherwise be destroyed? As science expands its capacity to preserve life, where does the distinction lie between "ordinary" and "extraordinary" measures, between a necessary defense of the right to life and a needless prolongation of suffering? What about genetically modified food, with its potential to feed the hungry, but its uncertain impact on human health and on traditional agricultural techniques? Could condoms be countenanced for a married, heterosexual couple where one partner has HIV/AIDS? All these questions, and scores more, bedevil moral theologians, lay activists, pastors and bishops, pulling Catholic debate into uncharted waters.

Six: The Wireless World
Once upon a time, the clerical caste held a near-monopoly on catechesis, faith formation, education … essentially, on shaping the Catholic imagination. That monopoly has been eroded over the centuries by the invention of the printing press, the rise of a free press in the West, the emergence of theologically sophisticated laity, the spread of independent broadcast outlets, and a host of other factors. Today, anyone who can find their way to a Starbucks with a laptop can be their own publisher. The blogosphere is full of Catholic offerings: "Open Book," "Relapsed Catholic," "The Cafeteria is Closed," "Whispers in the Loggia," "the Curt Jester," to name some of the better-known. The Catholic conversation is a wide-open marketplace, and if bishops want to make themselves heard, it has to be by dint of their message rather than their office. The potential to change the calculus became clear in the Terry Schiavo case, when bloggers did more to mobilize Catholic activism than pronouncements from either the bishops' conference or the local hierarchy.

Seven: The Wojtyla Revolution
Pope John Paul II was an ad extra pope, more concerned with the struggle against Soviet-style Communism or a "culture of death" in the West than he was with the internal affairs of the Catholic church. In effect, John Paul cried basta! ("enough!") to the season of experimentation and reform that followed the Second Vatican Council, calling Catholics to a strong sense of internal unity in order to fuel a more effective engagement with the world outside. If the documents of Vatican II, as well as more amorphous understandings of their "spirit," framed debate in the post-conciliar period, it is the example of John Paul II which is most decisive for the new, "upside down" era. For our purposes, his legacy can be boiled down to a simple formula: end the navel-gazing, stop tinkering with church teachings and structures, and get on with evangelizing the world. Critics would argue that this formula led John Paul to neglect festering internal problems, and that the sexual abuse crisis, to take one example, was the legacy of that neglect. Nevertheless, the Copernican shift of John Paul's papacy was to direct the Catholic gaze to the outside world, to "take it to the street."

Eight: Globalization
Growing integration of global finance, politics, and culture marks the single most defining characteristic of our era, creating unparalleled wealth and opportunity for some, while making the misery of others a permanent source of outrage and instability. While one billion people enjoy standards of living never before achieved, another billion people get by on less than $1 a day, and some 10 million children each year die from avoidable, poverty-related illnesses. Those inequities are generating deep concern both for moral and security reasons, and they tend to engage leaders in the global South in a special way, given that the losers in the new global game tend to be predominantly in developing nations. As Southern voices become more vocal within Catholicism, therefore, concern for what John Paul II called the "globalization of solidarity" as well as markets will become an increasingly central Catholic theme. There will likely continue to be widely differing Catholic opinions on how best to express the church's social teaching in public policy, and this debate will intensify.

Nine: Polarization and its Discontents
One of the defining features of the post-conciliar era in Roman Catholicism has been a kind of Catholic tribalism, pitting left against right, liturgically oriented Catholics against social activists, local churches against Rome, and so on down the familiar litany of internal fractures. It's not just that there is division, a fact of ecclesiastical life that dates back to the Acts of the Apostles. Today's Catholic tribes attend their own conferences, read their own journals, applaud their own heroes, and have developed their own languages, so that on the rare occasions when they encounter Catholics of other perspectives it can actually be difficult to communicate. In many ways, Catholics of all these tribes have been unwittingly evangelized by the secular culture, seeing the church as one more battlefield upon which interest group struggles are fought. Yet these divisions are also puzzling and disheartening to many Catholics, especially those under 40 who were born after Vatican II, and there are indications of a growing desire for a different way of managing relationships in the church.

Ten: The Sexual Abuse Crisis
Though the epicenter of the sexual abuse crisis remains the English-speaking world, the phenomenon is global. Its toll has been enormous, above all in the United States. It includes settlements of more than $1 billion and the bankruptcy of, to date, four American dioceses (Portland, Davenport, Spokane, and Tucson). More deeply, the crisis has badly damaged the church's public image, caused a loss of confidence in the leadership of the church, injured relationships between bishops and priests, and made it much more difficult for good priests to carry out their ministry. All of this was brought back into focus recently when the Preacher of the Papal Household, Capuchin Fr. Rainero Cantalamessa, suggested the need for penance related to the scandals. To date, there is still debate within the church as to the causes and context of the crisis, but there seems little question that the fallout from this trauma will be with Catholicism for some time.