More and more Americans who were raised Catholic are leaving the church, according to a recent survey.
The General Social Survey (GSS) found that 62% of Americans raised Catholic said they no longer identified as being a member of the church.
That percentage fell from 84% in 1973 and 74% in 2002.
Even worse numbers for the Catholic Church concern Americans raised in the faith and still attending Mass every Sunday.
In 1973, roughly 34% of all those raised Catholic were attending Mass weekly. That percentage fell to 20% by 2002 and 11% by 2022.
Basically, 9 out of 10 cradle Catholics are leaving at a time the church is led by American-born Pope Leo XIV, who was elevated to his position in May.
“If these trends continue, then even with ongoing significant levels of Catholic immigration (which mitigate, or rather mask, our domestic decline), the size of the American Church will shrink dramatically in the decades to come,” authors Michael Rota and Stephen Bullivant wrote in the University of Notre Dame’s Church Life Journal.
“Simply put, no realistic amount of evangelizing new people, or bringing back those ‘prodigals’ who have left — mission-critical as both those apostolates are — can make up for these kinds of losses.”
Rota, philosophy professor at the University of St. Thomas, and Bullivant, theology and sociology professor at St. Mary’s University, examined the decline in religious practice among Catholic-born Americans using GSS data. They suggested that the church, in trying to combat the loss of followers, work to create stronger community ties, especially among children.
“Before the 1950s, the average Catholic youth would have looked around in their social circle and seen a lot of consensus about faith [and] about the importance of worshiping God in some religion or denomination,” Rota told EWTN on Aug. 13. “Today, it’s not like that.
“[Young Catholics] are much more likely to have many non-Catholic friends, probably non-Catholic family members. In the culture at large, there’s many anti-Catholic and anti-religious voices. So that puts pressure on youth as they grow up.”
The Catholic Church, though, is not the only religion suffering in the U.S.
In 2013, 72% of Americans considered religion to be the most important thing in their lives, or among many important things. In 2023, only 53% said the same.
“When the internet hit the scene, in the late ’90s, we [saw] a huge spike in the percentage of youth who don’t identify with any religion,” Rota said, Catholic News Agency reported.
“Human beings are socialized by their families, their close social network, but also by the culture that they’re in. And what the internet and smartphones have done is change the balance of what’s doing more work.”
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