The Donroe Doctrine is a Scam

This is from an article on the New Republic site, by the same name.  New Republic has never been one of my favorite opinion journal places, but I don't think anything they said in this article is untrue. Seem like they pretty well nailed it:

The Donroe Doctrine Is a Scam | The New Republic

Is Confession Dead? A Catholic Historian's View UPDATED!

 Is Confession Dead? An Interview with a Catholic Historian

Of course, the state's attempts to root out sexual abuse by focusing, in part, on the privacy of confession assumes that American Catholics are still celebrating the sacrament. But only a minority of the faithful are seeking out confession at all, finds author James O'Toole in his urgent, provocative new study of the sacrament, For I Have Sinned: The Rise and Fall of Catholic Confession in America

O'Toole, professor of history emeritus and the university historian at Boston College, details the growth and eventual decline of confession in the United States, prompting questions about the sacrament's future. A former archivist for the Boston Archdiocese, O'Toole spoke with the National Catholic Reporter about the once-widespread popularity of the sacrament in U.S. parishes, the ongoing controversy surrounding clergy-penitent confidentiality, and the social changes that he says dramatically reduced Americans' visits to the confessional.

Happy New Year!

 

Goodbye to 2025, welcome 2026.

This is a winter poem by Rudyard Kipling that my dad liked:

"ICE was here"

A parish near Boston links ICE arrests to the birth of the Christ child, unleashing a firestorm of controversy.

LDS Loosing Younger Members

 US Gen Z and Millennials Leaving Morman Church

Jana Riess

December 10, 2025

Alex Bass, as part of his Mormon Metrics Substack, has analyzed data from several national surveys while helping me and Benjamin Knoll with the quantitative research for our forthcoming book on the Mormon faith crisis. As always, when we’re looking at data about a small minority, we need to be mindful that the margin of error can be high. With this in mind, each of our graphs includes the error bars to show the range of possible findings.

The first graph from the General Social Survey, which asked about childhood religion as well as current religion, shows we’ve gone from retaining over three-quarters of childhood LDS members through the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, to keeping around 40% in the 2020s — a statistically significant drop. 

In 2007, according to Pew Religious Landscape Studies, the LDS church retained 70% of childhood members in the U.S. (n = 581) In 2014, that was 64% (n = 661), and in 2023–24 it had declined still further to 54% (n = 525).

That 54% current retention rate looks better than the GSS’ 38%, so that’s potentially good news for LDS leaders. But once again, we’re witnessing a clear drop from the fairly recent past. Both major U.S. surveys that track childhood affiliation are saying that more people are leaving than used to.

Other religions used to envy our retention of youth. As sociologist Christian Smith put it in his recent book “Why Religion Went Obsolete,” the LDS church was once “legendary for its impressive retention rates among young people.”

Smith was the lead researcher 20 years ago for the National Study of Youth and Religion. That longitudinal study’s findings were so positive for the LDS church that they were written up in the Church News and trumpeted by the church’s official newsroom in 2005, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2013. 

But the data isn’t so sunny anymore, according to Smith’s research. “While Mormon retention looked solid in the early 2000s, in the years since, as Millennial Mormons moved through emerging adulthood, they began exiting the LDS church in dramatic, unprecedented numbers,” he wrote. 

According to the GSS, only 29% of Greatest and Silent generation members left the church in the U.S. That increased slightly to 33% for the baby boomers and 37% for Generation X. Then it shot up to 55% for millennials and Gen Z

Ben’s analysis of Pew’s most recent data tells a similar story. The next graph shows a drop in retention between those born before 1960 (where 70% stayed LDS) and those born since 1980 (where only 49% stayed). The precise percentages aren’t the same as those of GSS, but the generational trajectory is.

I want to make one final observation. Both of these same surveys clearly show that those Mormons who remain identified with the church are often deeply religious. That’s true of LDS Gen Zers and millennials too: The ones who stay in the church are far more religiously devout than other Americans their age.

I’ll explore that more in the next column, but for now let me just say that more than one story can be true, even in the same data set.

Discerning the signs

This is my homily for today, the Third Sunday of Advent, Cycle A.  The day's readings are here.  

Before the homily text, a few notes:

1. The day's Gospel reading is thematically appropriate for Advent, with its focuses on John the Baptist and the inbreaking of the kingdom, but in some ways it's a surprising selection, in that it's not from Matthew's infancy narrative.  Rather, the incident happens later in Matthew's Gospel: after Jesus not only has been born, but has grown to adulthood and seemingly is well into his public ministry.  It's as though the last two weeks' Cycle A Advent Sundays book-end John the Baptist's career, with last Sunday's reading recounting the beginning, and this Sunday's reading recounting the end.    

2.  Not that I expect anyone to keep track of this, but it's been a few months since I've posted a homily here.  That's because, until today, I haven't preached since September.  In the 20+ years I've been a deacon, I've preached once per month.  But that schedule was interrupted a few months ago.  Here is what happened: until September, we had two priests assigned to our parish.  Then the associate pastor left, rather unexpectedly.  All of his celebrant slots, not only for the weekend masses but also for weekday masses, funerals, etc., have had to be filled by visiting priests.  At our parish, the rule for preaching is: if the deacon is scheduled to preach, then the deacon preaches - unless the celebrant is a visiting priest.  As a courtesy, visiting priests always are invited to preach.  For the last two months, on the weekend that deacons are expected to preach, all of my scheduled masses were with visiting priests, so I haven't preached.  (I don't think that was intentional; it was just the luck of the draw that I was with a visiting priest every time.)  

In a way, I didn't mind the break - writing a homily takes a lot of time - but I missed it.  I've found that the exercise of preparing a homily is very good for me spiritually, because of the reflection and prayer that is required.  For me, the prayer isn't so much murmuring Hail Marys (although I'm capable of doing that, especially in desperation of I can't find something to talk about), as 'listening' with an open heart as I reflect on the word of God.  

Btw, the parish certainly didn't lose anything by my not preaching for a couple of months: our visiting priests, who are a combination of retired diocesan priests and active priests from a religious order (the Viatorians), all are good homilists.  The religious order priests, in particular, seem to preach from a different "place".  It's been a blessing to our faith community to have both groups.

3.  I gave two different homilies today.  The one I'm printing here was the 'adult' homily.  At another mass today, I invited the children to come forward and sit on the sanctuary steps, and I did a sort of Q&A homily with them, drawing their thoughts on Advent, preparing for Christmas and rejoicing (as today as Gaudete Sunday).  We sang a couple of songs together, too.  The kids did a great job.  But that kind of a homily, filled with dialogue and music, doensn't really translate to posting to a blog.  

At any rate, here is the 'adult' homily for yesterday:

Driverless driving is much safer

The safety advantages of Waymo self-driving vehicles are impossible to ignore.