Pews are seen at St. Camillus Church in Silver Spring, Md., April 10. (CNS photo/Tyler Orsburn)
By Richard Halloran
Special to the Hawaii Catholic Herald
Patrick Downes’ excellent article on shrinking Catholic congregations in Hawaii (Hawaii Catholic Herald, May 17, 2019) leads to the wider question of a troubled Roman Catholic Church all across America.
In the nation, only 21.1 percent of those who profess to be Catholic practice their religion by going to Mass almost every week, according to CARA, the Center for Applied Research for the Apostolate at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.
Hawaii seems to reflect the nation in which the 36,580 priests who serve nationwide is but 37.6 percent of the priesthood of half a century ago. The men in a seminary, who represent the future of the church, number 3,406, which is 59 percent of the priests of 1965. Perhaps most stunning is the decline in the number of nuns, the women who teach in schools, nurse the sick in hospitals, care for children in orphanages, and do the other charitable work of the church.
CARA found that 179,954 women were sisters in 1965. Last year, that number had plummeted to 44,117, a drop of 75.5 percent since 1965, the year after CARA’s founding and the base line for much of its research.
In a Catholic population of 76.3 million are 26.1 million adults who have left the church, some to join another church, others to cease attending any denomination.
The critical question, to be asked in every aspect of the church in America today, is: “Why?”
Probably there are as many explanations as there are Catholics in the pews. Floating through the internet are dozens of attempts to answer the key question of “why” but there seems to be no consensus.
A common reason given by ex-Catholics: “I just sort of drifted away” without making a conscious decision to leave the church. Another reason often given to researchers: “Mass is boring.” Many thus asserted that their spiritual needs were not being met.
The Pew Research Center, with headquarters in Washington, D.C., found that some Catholics left the church because of disagreements with the church’s teaching on birth control, abortion and homosexuality.
Pew also found that some Catholics left because priests were not allowed to marry. Still others were critical of what they perceived to be the poor treatment of women in the church, including the prohibition of women being ordained as priests.
The sex abuse scandal that has rocketed though the pews in recent years was given as another reason for quitting the church.
The Gallup Poll, which operates 30 city centers, queried 581 ex-Catholics this year on their attitudes toward Catholic priests and bishops. They found that 25 percent had little or no confidence in the priests and 26 percent had the same feeling about their bishops.
Two bishops who have sought to identify the reasons Catholics quit are Bishop David M. O’Connell of Trenton, N.J., and Bishop Robert E. Barron, auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles. In 2012, Bishop O’Connell commissioned two scholars, William J. Byron of St. Joseph’s University and Charles E. Zech of Villanova, to do a survey on why Catholics leave. Father Byron is a Jesuit priest and former president of Catholic University. Zech is an attorney with a PhD from Notre Dame.
They found seven reasons, including the sexual abuse scandal, Catholic condemnation of homosexuality, and dissatisfaction with priests. Some contended priests were “aloof” and “insensitive.” Others said homilies often were “uninspired.”
The researchers found Catholics who asserted that the hierarchy was too closely tied to conservative politics. The church’s attitude toward divorced and remarried Catholics was seen as harsh. The seventh reason was the church’s stance on women. Bishop Barron based a recent talk on the Byron-Zech survey plus his own findings. “The second largest religion in America,” he said, “is ex-Catholics.” The bishop underscored what he called “bad preaching,” echoing a complaint that seems to run through most discussions of the church’s troubles. He also said that many ex-Catholics found priests “aloof and indifferent.”
“We need better customer relations,” he said, like those that commercial companies foster to market their goods and services.
Richard Halloran, of Hawaii Kai, is a former military correspondent for The New York Times
