Just the other day, a dear friend from Saint Louis sent me the following article which appears on the cruxnow website and is entitled “Mass attendance in U.S. down in recent years, Gallup poll finds”.
The article reports the following.
Catholic pews in the U.S. are emptying, according to data from a recent Gallup survey, which showed that Mass attendance is down to a 39 percent weekly average over the past 10 years.
From 2005-2008, Catholics reported attending Mass on a 45 percent average within seven days, but it has since dropped 6 percent from 2014-2017.
The average Mass attendance in 1955 was at 75 percent, which roughly consisted of all age groups. During this time period, around three in four Catholics had attended Mass within the past week.
But, that number is slowly changing, pointing to a historic shift in the Church, with some interesting percentages within the younger age groups.
“In particular, older Catholics have become less likely to report attending church in the past seven days,” noted the Gallup study.
“For the first time, a majority of Catholics in no generational group attend weekly.”
The age group with the highest number of weekly attendance was the 60 and above demographic, with 49 percent. That number dropped from 59 percent over the past decade.
The younger demographic - aged 21 to 29 - saw a slight rise in weekly Mass attendance from 2005-2008 at 29 percent. This then dropped in 2014-2017 to 25 percent.
This rise and drop among the younger demographic is mainly due to the fact that younger adults are more likely in recent years to identify with non-Christian religions across the board.
In 2016, Gallup reported that one in five Americans are associated with no religious identity at all.
“All of this comes amid a broader trend of more Americans opting out of formal religion or being raised without it altogether,” the survey said.
Interestingly, the next oldest demographic - aged 30-39 - saw a slight rise in attendance from 40 to 43 percent in the past ten years. This was the only age group with a boost in attendance.
The Gallup study did note that the decline in weekly Mass attendance has shown that the overall proportion of Americans identifying as Catholic is “holding fairly steady,” which they attributed to the growth of the U.S. Hispanic population.
The study also highlighted that weekly church attendance among Protestants has remained fairly steady at around 45 percent for the last ten years, although fewer Americans now identify as Protestant, dropping from 71 percent to 47 percent over the past 60 years.
The article affirms other statistics that I have reported on this blogsite in previous articles.
But what I found most insightful was not the article itself, but my friends insightful observation regarding it.
Here is what he had to say:
I am a fan of Pope Francis. I do, however, find it mystifying that those of us that are such fans of this Pope fail miserably when it comes to admitting he has had no effect in bringing people back, or in, to the Church in the United States. In fact, by recent polls, we see the opposite.
The US polls cast a very favorable light on the Pope, but less and less Catholics during his papacy are going to Church!! Yet, the conservative Catholic parishes in St Louis, ( St Francis de Sales Oratory et al) are flourishing with young and old while deriding this Pope as a heretic.
Mystifying.
So, His Holiness has his followers.....they just aren't following him into Church.
With all due respect to this Pope whom I like, talking is one thing, getting people to follow you is another.
Leadership.
I totally agree and have little that I can add other than the fact that my friend is an astute observer of what is taking place in the Church these days.
I suggested to him (as I remind myself almost every moment of every day) that we need to ask the Holy Spirit to shower abundant Grace upon the Church, particularly at this moment when our Catholic Faith is struggling to respond to the exigencies of the secular culture in which we find ourselves in society these days.
Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle within us the fire of Your Love!
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