By Patrick Downes Hawaii Catholic Herald
Click. Click. Click. That’s the sound of October in Hawaii’s Catholic churches.
It’s the month the diocese counts how many people are going to Mass — usually by ushers pacing the aisles with clicking counters in their hands.
Every October each parish is asked to count heads at each Saturday vigil and Sunday Mass for each of the month’s four weekends. The numbers are then written on a form which is sent to the diocesan chancellor’s office where the average weekend tally is calculated.
Add up all the parish numbers and you get the average number of Catholics going to Mass weekly in Hawaii.
Last year, 2016, that number was 49,884 — 43,325 adults and 6,559 children up to age 12.
The count isn’t an exact science. According to Deacon Keith Cabiles of the chancellor’s office who oversees the October Count, 10 percent of the parishes did not send in tallies last year. So he fills in the blanks with the previous year’s numbers.
Then there are likely miscounts here and there. Also, parishioners who attend Mass less frequently than every week will skew the numbers.
But it is the only physical head-count the diocese does on a regular basis. What is it telling us?
Well, the count for 2015 was 49,550. Which means there was a bump of 334 more Mass-goers last year over the previous year. That’s good news considering the trend has been fewer people going to church.
In 2012, just five years ago, the October count was 55,517, or 5,633 more than last year.
In the 1900s, the count averaged around 60,000, 20 percent more than the numbers we are seeing today.
October is chosen because it is considered a neutral month, least affected by vacations and high-attendance feasts like Christmas and Easter. However, October has its own variables, like football season. It is also a slower month for tourist-oriented parishes.
