The Pew Survey and the Church's Lost Sheep

by Fr. Roger J. Landry - March 7, 2008

The headlines in newspapers and on television news channels last Tuesday were quite alarming: "Catholic tradition fading in the U.S," "Catholic Church Losing Grip on Faithful," "One in ten Americans an ex-Catholic."

These banners were all soliciting attention to stories on the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life's U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, an in-depth poll of 35,000 adult Americans on their religious practice.

If the headlines were disquieting, so were the articles they introduced. The 140-page survey showed, the news stories detailed, that 32 percent of adult Americans who were raised Catholics have left the Church, and that 10.1 percent of American adults is an ex-Catholic. Many of the stories quoted Dr. Luis Lugo, the director of the Pew Forum, who said, "The Catholic numbers eye-popping. One out of every ten people you meet on the street is a former Catholic." Other articles quoted Alan Wolfe, the director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College, who said, "If you remove immigrants, then Catholicism is in free fall."

While the findings of the survey are an obvious concern to Catholics, they first must be understood within the larger context of the study, something that many of the sensational stories did not do. The survey showed that 44 percent of adult Americans are no longer practicing the religious affiliation in which they were raised as children, which means that, across the board, only 56 percent of American adults are still adhering to their childhood affiliation. Since 68 percent of those baptized and raised Catholics are still Catholic, that means that the Catholic Church is doing well relative to the American norm.

Compared to Catholics, only 60 percent of Baptists, 58 percent of Lutherans, 49 percent of Pentecostals, 48 percent of Methodists, 48 percent of Church of Christ members, 44 percent of Episcopalians, and 36 percent of Presbyterians, are still practicing in the Church of their childhood. The only major religious affiliations that are doing better than the Catholic Church in retaining their members are the Jews at 74 percent and the Mormons at 72.

As much as a concern it is that one out of every ten Americans is an ex-Catholic, this type of exodus pales in comparison to what other traditions have undergone. If we look at what are called the mainline Protestant Churches — Episcopalians and non-evangelical Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Calvinists, and American Baptists — they were 66 percent of the U.S. population fifty years ago and are now just 18 percent. Protestantism as a whole has dropped from two-third of the population to just over half.

Georgetown's Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) said, in a published review of the Pew study, that these comparisons between faith groups are essential in order to understand what the data about the Catholic Church indicate. "Once these comparisons are made," the CARA review stated, "the Catholic losses are put into a more complete and clear perspective. As bad as the aggregate losses are for Catholics, the Catholic Church would be even worse off if they were losing members raised in the Church at the same rate as Baptists, Lutherans, Methodists or other Protestant faith groups. Without this context, it may appear that a vast number of Catholics recently got up and left the faith and that these losses were worse than those experienced by any other faith. In relative terms — as the percentage of those who retained the affiliation of their childhood — Catholics are among the most successful at retaining those raised in their faith. This point went largely unnoticed in the news coverage of the Pew results."

While there is some solace — despite the headlines — that the Catholic Church is doing comparatively well in a cultural context of much religious fluidity, Catholics and Church leaders are still right to be concerned that so many Catholics are leaving the practice of the Catholic faith as they grow older. Even though there is the delightful news that each Easter in America, about 150,000 adult converts enter the Church through the RCIA program, there is the sad news that for every adult convert to Catholicism (2.6% of the U.S. Catholic population), there are about four Catholics who are born-and-fled (10.1%). And while the number of Catholics in the U.S. has remained steady over the years because of the immigration of overwhelmingly Catholic immigrants from Latin America, it is also true that about 20 percent of Catholic immigrants cease the practice of the Catholic faith soon after they have arrived.

It behooves Catholics and the Catholic Church to understand and address why approximately one-third of baptized Catholics leave the Church. The Pew survey documents that of those who leave, 56 percent do so to join another religious tradition and 44 percent stop the practice of the faith altogether. The reasons why people leave are probably as many as the people who leave, but they do fall into certain categories. About eight years ago, the U.S. Bishops Conference did an extensive survey to ask ex-Catholics why they left. One of the bishops who participated in the research, Bishop Michael Saltarelli of Wilmington, Delaware, wrote a pastoral letter describing them as the first stage of responding to them.

Most ex-Catholics, Bishop Saltarelli wrote, cited one of nine reasons why they said they left or had become quasi-permanently inactive: They did not experience the power or presence of God in Catholicism or in the Catholic community of which they were a part; they did not experience warm, personal caring relationships in their encounters with Catholics — to them the people seemed cold and the services boring; they thought the way the faith was presented to them seemed to lack relation to daily lives and many ministers lacked sufficient understanding of their language and culture (particularly among immigrants); they had been hurt in some way by Catholics — laity or clergy — and have not been reconciled; they were in conflict with the teachings of the Church on matters of faith and morality; they were persuaded by others that the Catholic Church was false (probably because of their weak knowledge of the basics of the faith); they got married outside the Church and no longer felt welcome; they were too busy with jobs and families, or too lazy, to keep going; finally, they moved to new locations and never got around to finding a church in their new city or neighborhood.

There is not the space here in this editorial to try to come up with solutions for why Catholics leave, but the Church as a whole must turn to these stated reasons and to her prodigal sons and daughters who hold them. This Lent is a good time for all Catholics to pray for our fallen away brothers and sisters, to fast for them, and to give of ourselves to try to bring them home.

Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.