People appear to be entering the Catholic church in higher numbers. But folks also continue to leave.
You may have seen recent reports that OCIA numbers are up significantly for the Catholic church in the United States this year. The number being being fully initiated or completing their initiation appears to be higher both than last year and higher than 2019 (the last pre-COVID year). The National Catholic Register has a roundup of reports from individual dioceses. Here are a few of those cited in the article:
- Archdiocese of Oklahoma City: up 57% from 2025
- Archdiocese of Newark: up 30% from 2025; up 60% from 2019
- Archdocese of Boston: up 55% from 2025
- Diocese of Providence: up 76% from 2025
- The unsettled times we live in have people searching for stability and meaning
- The increase in immigration (until 2025)
- Continuing bounce-back from the significant drop in engagement and participation during the COVID lockdown era
- A change in the profile of those entering the church: from young adults preparing to marry, to young adults seeking membership for other reasons
- The first American pope has sparked interest in Catholicism among Americans
- Our present "golden age" of Catholic resources, presumably a reference to online resources such as Word on Fire and Hallow
Are these contradictory trends? In the New York Times, Ross Douthat suggests that the profiles of those entering the church are not the same as those leaving. In this theory, those who are entering are "seekers" who are attracted to Catholicism, perhaps for some of the reasons listed above; while those leaving may be so-called cradle Catholics or cultural Catholics whose social and spiritual ties to the church have frayed to the point that they no longer tether these folks. And consistent with a factor about which he writes frequently - declining birthrates - he notes that the incremental number each year of new cradle Catholics probably has been declining for some time.
Douthat also hypothesizes that the same megatrend - the abnormal, disruptive time in which we live - may be feeding both the "inbound" and "outbound" trends.
Douthat also points to research data from sociologist Ryan Burge that, in the US, higher levels of educational attainment correlate positively with higher levels of religious engagement. (For some reason, the opposite correlation holds true in Europe.) Douthat speculates that we may be witnessing a sort of polarization occuring in the Catholic church (and other religions) in the US, in which those entering the church are more highly educated, while those leaving are less highly educated. That's interesting, and to a diocesan official concerned about finances, it may be mildly hopeful (as higher levels of education tend to correlate with higher levels of income); but as Douthat notes, it's disconcerting to say the least for a faith that sees its primary mission as being to the poor.
On a personal level, some (well, most) of my young adult children are presently unchurched. So it's of interest to me that the young adult seekers coming into the church have a similar, educated profile to by kids. Fingers crossed!
ReplyDeleteI don't think our younger son was a very diligent Mass attender during his college years. But that changed when he got married, and especially when they had kids. (Plus I credit our daughter-in-law for influencing things in that direction!)
DeleteIn our three parish family, we have 14 entering this year. Which is more than double from last year. I do think the pandemic was a big disruptor, and hopefully we are pulling out of some of the disruption.
ReplyDeleteThe bad news is of course that parishes have had to be merged. OCIA was merged, though people will belong to the parish they want to join. Four out of the 14 newbies will belong to St. Anthony's. We already have had one new member, but he only was with us for one day. He literally joined on his deathbed.
We are losing our school next fall, the students are being absorbed into the larger parish's school. None of the teachers are losing their jobs, they can all go over to St. B's, because of the expanded enrollment. Two teachers have decided to retire. That is about as good an outcome as we could hope for, but still sad. Our school had been founded in 1914.
We do have two seminarians from St. A's now. One will be a transitional deacon in May.
I haven’t read the article by Douthat. Later maybe. I stopped reading him a few years ago. Too predictable. Generally they are a waste of time because he’s a lousy analyst. He tends to make great leaps to his always conservative conclusions based on assumptions that are often unsupported by legitimate data. So I tried to look at the studies by Ryan Burge but didn’t get very far as he wants money to read his stuff. He’s a former Baptist pastor as well as a political scientist/ statistician. . After going in circles to try to “claim my free article” I ended up with a request to subscribe and an image of a chart on X that I would need an account with X to view. I refuse to have an account with X. I was interested in his claim that the more educated Americans are more religious than less educated Americans, which does not sync with most studies. I wanted to see his sources and methodology, but no luck.
ReplyDeleteMy sense is that young adults who are conservative politically (from those white Christian families who support trump) may be the majority of young adult converts who aren’t converting due to marriage.
But who knows. Those of you active in parishes would know more than I do. It’s too early to determine if this uptick is part of a genuine long- term trend or just a short- term fad. Barron and Hallow would definitely attract the more conservative “ seekers” and lose the more progressive seekers who might end up Episcopalian or UCC or even Buddhist instead.
My son in Boulder lives across the street from a Catholic Church that is the Newman Center for Colorado University. It was in the news a few years ago after a young woman killed herself following counseling from a priest and nun there about her homosexuality. Her parents blamed the priest and nun. They were trying to push her into conversion therapy to free her from her mortally sinful inclinations. It might have been that case that led to the ban on conversion therapy that the SC just found unconstitutional. I hadn’t yet heard about this when visiting our son and I went into the church to look around. It’s very easy to get a sense of a parish and its priests - conservative or progressive - from the way the church looks, and from the literature left in the racks, including the bulletin. When I was leaving I was shocked to see about a dozen young people had arrived, probably university students - all male- on their knees in the narthex. I decided to stay to see what was going to happen. The priest arrived to say a 5 pm mass (weekday) and then these young men got up and followed him into the nave. Several young women arrived a few minutes later, but they weren’t part of the on-their-knees on the hard floor of the narthex group. I found the scene to be somewhat off putting - almost creepy..