Sat 17 Aug 2019, 14:04 PM | Posted by editor
LETTER from John Pickard, Brentwood Labour Party
There was in interesting book review in the Financial Times today (August 17, 2019), on a book entitled Mass Exodus: Catholic Disaffiliation in Britain and America since Vatican II.
Not having read the book (yet) I can’t describe all the detail. But the review itself was a good read and it gives a number of very telling facts and figures and some of the background to the book. Apparently there is a “venomous war” raging in the Church over the reasons for the decline in support in Britain and USA. Is it due to the scandals of sexual abuse and the fact that the Church is out of sync with most women’s views on contraception, abortion and divorce – as most reasonable people would think? Or is it, as some hard-liners are apparently arguing, setting their faces against the overwhelming weight of evidence, that it is due to the presence of “too many gay men” among the clergy.
At any rate, the Church, in terms of participation and the recruitment of new clergy, is definitely on the decline so that many local churches are moribund or closing. It has been described as the “biggest crisis in the Church since the Reformation.”
The review refers to “cradle Catholics”, by which we understand those born (and christened) into a Catholic tradition. There are around 1.3bn cradle Catholics in the world. But in the USA, only about 15 per cent of them attend weekly mass and 35 per cent don’t even admit any longer to a Catholic identity. In the UK, the figures are worse: only 13 per cent attend mass and 37 per cent say they no longer believe in religion of any kind.
“Among an adult US population of 250m,” the review argues, “there are 87m cradle Catholics, 30 of whom have lapsed. In the UK, in an adult population of 50m, there are 7.2 cradle Catholics, of whom 3.2m are lapsed. Mass Exodus, supplies similar global figures, demonstrating attrition within many western countries, especially in Germany, where 216,078 members left the Church last year.”
Leaving aside the admirable German efficiency in knowing precisely how many Church members have dropped out, it is clear that there is a world-wide crisis in the Church. This must have a lot to do with the fact that the Church’s official teaching on abortion, LBGT rights, same-sex marriage, divorce, contraception and many other things is completely out of touch with many of its erstwhile members, especially women.
Among those who remain in the Church, it seems that the most die-hard and reactionary elements are becoming a majority. “In the 2016 election, Catholics not only backed Donald Trump, but gave him a larger share of their votes than the total body of voters.”
I might have to read the book.
