Here’s a Catholic priest writing about the problems of Catholicism.
Everywhere from Boston to Minneapolis, Catholic churches have closed or been consolidated into regional clusters. The chief reason is declining Mass attendance.
In New York, Mass attendance has fallen to European levels, around 15 percent on an average Sunday, according to The New York Times. In Boston, it is even lower, around 12 percent.
Nationwide, only 24 percent of Catholics go to Mass on an average Sunday, down from 55 percent in 1965.
To which I can only say, “Thank you for the Good News, Father.”
But you can tell he’s honestly concerned about this happy decline, and he writes further about his experiences talking to the nominal Catholics. There’s a long list of reasons, most of them having to do with the unimportance of church relative to other concerns in their lives, but also serious differences of opinion with the church on matters like the treatment of lesbians and gays.
The priest doesn’t have a solution for his problem, that the church is increasingly irrelevant. That irrelevance, though, is the answer to getting rid of religion — what you believe about magical deities does not and should not have any significant effect on your life.
How about contempt for tolerance of child molestation? Seems like could be kind of a correlating factor to me.
The RCC had the best (for them) intentions when they cooked up the infallibility thing but it has backfired badly on them. It makes it impossible for them to adapt to changing circumstances and now the bottom line is suffering. Maybe they can return to some version of selling indulgences. Do whatever you like in life but include something for Jesus in your will.
That’s welcome news. It’s long past time that the church loses its hold on people.
Must be why they are puttong their money in hospitals. Can’t fleece the flock anymore.
I’d be curious to know the demographics of those who still attend mass regularly. My bet is that it skews to the older range meaning the die-off in attendance is only going to get worse. Couldn’t happen to a nicer group of organized criminals.
Broken Things @ 4:
They’re buying up hospitals because it’s one way for them to have what they most crave: power and control. When they own the hospitals, they can gleefully continue to condemn women to death, and control those who don’t die.
Larry @ 5:
Probably. I grew up catholic, and I suspect that even among those who have dropped church attendance, there’s still plenty of catholic attitude and behaviour going on. It can take a lot of work to shake off catholicism.
There used to be three hospitals in the city I live in. Two were Catholic. The third merged last year with one of the Catholic hospitals, so now it’s Catholic too. They control the healthcare for the entire city.
Carlie @ 7:
That’s terrifying. There are two hospitals in Bismarck, and news came that MedCenter (the non-catholic hospital) was selling, a lot of people were very anxious, but it sold to a secular concern. *Phew* I sure as hell hope it stays that way, too. The only medical facilities in Dickinson, where Mister works, are catholic, and no one will go there unless they have no choice – their reputation is fucking awful.
I also grew up Catholic, but I decided I had better things to do when I was 8. Even in Hagerstown, Maryland there were better things to do, so I played baseball… That was good! And now I’m in Wauwatosa, WI., and my 21 year old son is about as certain I was right when I was 8 as I was.
A classic quote from the article:
wait, what? Is this a reverse from the previous posts?
(emphasis in original)
Yes, brianpansky, because there is obviously no context or very obvious differences between one sentence and the other.
—–
It’s always good to be reminded that catholicism is declining, now, if only it did so more quickly, and all over southamerica….
@Caine – wouldn’t argue with that, but power, control and money are closely related.
Well, on the good side, declining attendance is one way to solve the priest shortage. Probably the best way.
Caine – yep. The city I grew up in only has one hospital, and it’s Catholic too. I wish there were state regulations that required that people in a state be within a reasonable distance of secular health care, but that’s even less likely to happen than single-payer coverage.
I’ve got the lovely choice of Catholic Hospital or Adventist Hospital. Yay! (not yay).
I wonder how they derived that percentage. I don’t believe it.
From one of more Catholic parts of Europe, regarding church attendance:
Sure, no one in the family but a granny goes to church every Sunday. The rest may or may not attend at Christmas and Easter. The new baby? Baptized, always. Later, they almost certainly attend catechism at school and at church. They may attend mass the year in which they have first communion and later confirmation only because mum forces them out of bed every Sunday morning, but they go.
And in accordance with their faith, the whole happy family votes against gay rights and abortion.
Because God and family values.
/pessimist
… ok, actually we have gotten more progressive and there are parents who don’t force their kinds into religion. But the whole picture is still far from nice. Especially lately, with younger generations getting more conservative than their parents.
It’s similar on the Protestant side of the aisle, and only a slightly different attitude. I know quite a few people who haven’t been inside a church in years except to bury somebody or marry somebody, but they’ll get all pissy with you if you question the basic tenets of god, Jesus, and the Bible, much less religion in general.
Beatrice @ 18:
Yeah, that was my thought as well (#6). Catholics that don’t go to church are still catholic, and that’s reflected in attitudes and behaviour (and votes, unfortunately). My grandfather couldn’t be arsed to go to church outside of twice a year, but he was nasty catholic stance on issues all the way through.
My wife’s parents are VERY catholic. None of their four children (age range from 38 to 48) go to church. At least 2 are atheists. My parents are “catholic lite” (Anglican, which is Episcopalian in the US) and none of their children believe, and certainly none of us go to church. I think the age-based attendance is irrefutable. Might not be as strong an effect in the fundamentalist and evangelical protestant churches, but in mainstream catholic and some other major denominations it definitely operates.
I look forward to the day when the church sinks into irrelevance and is attended to by a minuscule portion of the population. I’m sick of hearing about religion. Sick of the bigotry against gays (I’m a straight white male of middle age, but I understand human diversity, and have gay friends and family members who have sexual orientations outside of the binary restrictions the religious hold dear). Sick of the hatred of those in the out-group (like immigrants, who take the jobs that americans won’t take). Sick of the fucking hypocrisy. If religion died, I would cavort naked, pissing on its grave.
If there actually was an omnipotent and omniscient god, and it had a clue, and a moral compass, it would in the blink of an eye remove religion from the world, having recognized it as a poison. Unless this god was a defective freak who really did need a bunch of sycophants to worship it on the basis of nothing. In which case, not worthy. My father use to say to me when I was a kid, “you’d argue with the lord”. He was right. I would. I’d tell him (would have to be a him, as George Carlin said, “no woman could fuck up creation as bad as that”) he was a dick.
The religious mind is impossible to comprehend (for me).
Meanwhile, Archdiocese of Cologne reveals €3.35bn fortune: “Roman Catholic archdiocese, long considered Germany’s richest, publishes accounts revealing assets held in stocks, funds and property”.
This reminds us of the real problem: A shrinking, and possibly less-wealthy,
tithetax base.It doesn’t actually do much to solve that, because it’s too homogenous geographically: you end up with the same or almost the same number of parishes that are viable in terms of the number of churchgoers, but way fewer priests for them. In rural Austria there are priests who take a tour of several villages each Sunday and “celebrate” mass in each of them.
Gah.
Why? It’s not out of line with the percentage for Christians in general in the US: half of them (as of 2000 or so) say they go to church every Sunday, but only a quarter actually goes.
Really? Even in countries with a communist history I didn’t expect that to happen now.
David,
Admittedly, the information is from “some analysis I read somewhere” and my own observations.
25 of the 26 other Catholic dioeceses of Germany are also going to publish their finances. Würzburg refuses, saying that after 1000 years of history it’s way too complicated to trace which rights really belong to whom; but some of the others are 1200 to 1300 years old…
congential cynic @21: My father use to say to me when I was a kid, “you’d argue with the lord”.
That’s what I like about Judaism. Among the founding myths is Jacob wrestling with the Angel of the Lord all night, demanding to be blessed. At dawn, the Lord finally gives in and blesses him. The Rabbinical tradition seems to have picked up that attitude, and ran with it ;-).
Still, that’s surprising, because neither my observations (which don’t include Croatia, but do range all the way to Poland) nor anything I’ve read indicate anything like that.
…not counting the Putin Youth in Russia.
…and makes jokes about it.
@ DM
A couple of reasons. Their membership numbers are inflated via “once a catholic always a catholic”. I’m on their membership list and I’ve not set foot in a church in decades. Then, between the sex crime cover-ups and the animosity to women and LGBT folks, I would think people are fleeing in droves, though they remain members.
This cleric sent attendance requests to 500 people and got 8% to show up. I have no evidence to back it up, but I think the churchgoers are more likely to be somewhere in that percentage.
The Catholics will bounce back. A severe depression, a deadly war, a serious terrorist attack, and the church will be overwhelmed with new converts.
And, in some places, “everyone is a catholic”: When I was living in Ireland, I sometimes got the local whatever’s newsletter shoved into my mailbox. One particular issue was (mostly) a long whinge from the local priest, apologizing for something-or-another (less hours taking tithes or something), and explaining the reason was he was in his 80s and had to cover two of the somethings and had no trainee priestlings to help and and and…
Two things were noticeable: (1) No mention of the scandals (at the time, besides the child raping, the slave labor laundries and “industrial schools” had resurfaced in the news); and (2) A very smug assumption that everyone reading it was concerned and somehow responsible.
I too find that hard to believe. How does he know that? (God told him?) I would be much less skeptical if he said “Attendance is down 24%…” or “…down by 24%…”. It’s easy to approximate the quantity of parishioners in the pews, and the rate of decrease week to week, but how does he know how many Catholics there actually are, and how many are not attending Church? Hence my skepticism.
blf @ 31
Yeah, I know about the laundry hell-holes.
All my young memories of catholic are about the abusive nature of the RCC. It permeates the culture, from hell-threats to allowing nuns to be “nasty teacher” to the beatings that went on in every catholic household I knew of. Not spanking, beating, like it was normal.
The RCC has a lot more power in Ireland, hence the extreme abuse of the Magdalene
laundriesslavery prisons.The comments on the National Catholic Reporter article PZ linked quite quickly devolved into a discussion about birth control. Some people are saying that a bunch of elderly celibate males should not be making rules about contraception and others are talking about “natural law” and “hormonal contraception is bad artificial, not at all like heart pacemakers or hip replacements which are good artificial.”
All five members of my birth family were Catholic. One brother converted to Episcopalianism. Other brother is agnostic while Mom and I are atheist, but we have not been excommunicated and are therefore still counted as Catholic. My Dad still attends Mass. 25%. QED.
My point being that the Catholic church has us all registered, so they can calculate the denominator.
Kamaka #33:
For those who can’t afford the Magdalene Sisters movie, Channel Four’s Sex In A Cold Climate.
@grumpyoldfart #30:
You forgot Martian invasion.
There was a study, a while back, where researchers compared survey results of church attendance (i.e. people answering questions about their attendance) with actual headcounts in churches during services. I believe that in Europe, the numbers were roughly the same, but in the US the surveyed numbers were double those they found by counting heads.
One possible explanation — Americans are more prone to regard church attendance as a proxy for being a “good person.” It’s certainly something that American politicians pay heed to.
Was just listening to a Catholic radio station bemoaning the steep drop in church attendance over the last few years. Their (tortured) explanation:
1) Among self-declared Catholics, men and women are about equal in number.
2) But among regular Mass attendance, twice as many women attend.
3) In families where the father attends Mass regularly “recidivism” among the children is much lower.
4) Therefore, the crisis of church attendance is a crisis of male church attendance.
5) God’s message can’t be the problem (of course), so it must be something else.
6) The three problems are (a) Radical feminism leading to a feminized church (b) virtual reality (video games, the Internet, I guess) leading to isolation and (c) porn.
7) The fix? Evangelize men more directly.
8) Profit!
Kind of cool how a church with 100% male hierarchy (no rounding up needed) still manages to blame radical feminism as a root cause of its present ills..
Church attendance trends are very much drive by generational differences, and not only in the Catholic church. If you look at the long term charts from Pew Research (“Nones on the Rise”) the pattern is clear. Once a generation reaches maturity (early-mid 20s) the proportion of those who consider themselves religious remains steady for the rest of their lives. In the past six generations (covering the “Greatest Generation” to “Young Millennials”) that number has risen from around 5% to 35%, and is likely to rise to around 50% within another generation or two, I believe.
In the UK, the process is more advanced. My own parent’s (Methodist) church hasn’t had any children for at least the last 10 years, and the average age of the congregation must be close to 70.
@40: Radical feminism leading to a feminized church
Apparently, the “radical feminist” rot started way back in, like, the third century and has been doing pretty well ever since, being entrenched by Papal pronouncements in the 19th and 20th centuries, effectively establishing a female secondary deity. I’m speaking, of course, of the tradition of venerating the Virgin Mary. So maybe these reactionaries need to be looking at their own history….
(Granting for the sake of argument, of course, that “feminization” of the church is a real thing, and is what turns off men. Which I doubt).
I think it would take more than that, nowadays. Probably more along the lines of a complete collapse of civilized society, like the mess we see in Somalia, or Syria.
Daz @ 37
Nice link. My blood pressure went up watching it, though.
From the documentary notes:
The RCC hierarchy of Ireland must have been running around like disturbed ants when this film came out.
Obvious. Not going to church isn’t stigmatized over here among people below 70.
Agreed.
Well if this is the only response I’m getting:
@12, azhael
What is it about the context and the “very obvious differences” that makes the seeming contrdiction go away?
Catholics who are higher up in church hierarchy seem to be much more serious about being anti-abortion and anti-birth control. That plays into the acquisition of hospitals in the USA and Canada, as was noted up-thread.
Catholic leaders seize control of cultural issues, including gay marriage and abortion, wherever they can, including in catholic-run high schools.
SF Gate link.
brianpansky @ 46
You want to demand a response? I’ll give you a response. I got your point @11, but I perceived the contradiction you note as a poorly constructed sentence by a very busy person. I was reading for comprehension.
From the Catholic faculty handbook mentioned in #47:
Civil rights are guaranteed to Californians, according to that state’s laws, so I think that includes teachers at Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory.
I fear that many Catholics are becoming Evangelicals rather than Nones (especially visible in Brazil).
This kind of sucks because it also means that creationists are increasing.
Just thought of a good analogy: insisting that “atheism only means that you don’t believe in any gods” is like insisting that “gravity only means that there is an attractive force between any two objects, which is proportional to the product of their masses divided by the square of the distance between them.” In a world where topographical variance in the distance of points on the surface of the earth from its center, large masses of liquid, tall buildings, trees, and beings capable of surviving limited amounts of acceleration and needing air to breathe exist.
Yes, there’s an extremely pedantic, nitpicky sense in which the statement is “true”, sort of, but to pretend that either concept has no further implications beyond its literal-absolute-minimum-summary is REALLY FUCKIN STUPID.
“You don’t HAVE to reinforce the supports holding up a building! Gravity only means F=G(m1)(m2)/(r^2)! It says NOTHING about supports or buildings!” Fuck you. Seriously.
Azkyroth, I’m not certain whether your ‘fuck you’ was aimed at Kamaka or brianpansky, but neither of them appears, to me, to be defending dictionary atheism. I think maybe you read someone wrongly. (Good analogy though.)
FWIW. I think Kamaka is right that PZ merely used a badly worded sentence. But I also think brianpansky is right, in that when as glaring an apparent contradiction as that appears, it should be questioned.
It was aimed at the hypothetical speaker of the quoted sentence preceding it, though a “Fuck off” would have better conveyed what I meant and I realized after a bit it might have been unclear. :/
Yah, me niether. Where are you going here, Azkyroth?
Either or, neither nor.
….also apparently forgot which part of the blockquote I deleted. >.>
Only in Brazil and perhaps its surroundings.
Ok, brianpansky, @ various, so long as you’re looking for attention:
Your point about the OP is accurate. As written, it’s a bad statement, and I disagree with it. PZ should be more careful when he writes. Fortunately, I don’t consider it important for people I look up to to be perfect, as I’m not religious.
There ya go. All happy now?
Getting back to the topic of PZ’s post: Catholic apologists bemoaning the church’s decline offer many reasons for it, but they steadfastly ignore the elephant in the room. For 1500 years (give or take), the Roman Catholic Church has been about empire-building & accumulating vast wealth, while it manipulates its lay members with spectacle, superstition, & magic tricks. Fewer & fewer people — at least in the First World — are willing to buy into that.
Georgia Sam @ 59
Magic tricks.
I remember reading somewhere (sorry, no idea where) that on current trends, the last British Methodist would die around 2035.
@61: the last British Methodist would die around 2035.
The last British Methodists I personally knew stopped being Methodists almost a century earlier than that ;-). And the succeeding generations (ie. direct descendants and nephews/nieces) range from vaguely theist (but not church-going) to atheist.
My dad had a bad bout of pneumonia when as he was in decline from dementia. Two different nurses scolded me to let nature take its course at the Catholic hospital to which he was sent . The next day he was up in bed, smiling at them with his usual charm and feeding himself. He lived another 5 years. I actually had to explain to his nurse that the reason he seemed so sick was because he was so sick. I was afraid to leave him alone there. Their comments were flippant too. They weren’t made in a meeting about his care plan.
Funny you should say that. My parents are lifelong Methodists now in their eighties, but about 12 years ago they attended a “through-the-Bible” Bible study, and by the end of the Old Testament, were pretty convinced they weren’t really Christians anymore.
They still attend church regularly — they have a lot of very good friends there, and they are a nice bunch of people, socially conscious, caring and giving — but it’s merely a social occasion for them now.
The most common such concern for me was the the desire for another hour or two of sleep on Sunday.
Akerm th @51:
“Yes, there’s an extremely pedantic, nitpicky sense in which the statement is “true”, sort of, but to pretend that either concept has no further implications beyond its literal-absolute-minimum-summary is REALLY FUCKIN STUPID.”
It’s also the reality we live in. To pick two well-known figures at random, Ayn Rand and Che Guevara were both indisputably atheists, but came to very different ethical conclusions (on just about every issue imaginable.) So, was one of them *less* of an atheist than the other? For every Bertrand Russel, there’s a Henry Kissinger. If atheism “should” mean more, it certainly hasn’t worked that way so far. At all.
joedelaney #66:
I’m getting practiced at stripping this to its bear bones…
Atheism therefore X
Different people may come to hold different values for X but there is always an X. (Otherwise there would be no point to the existence of any atheist movement, in any form.)
That’s where those who we refer to as dictionary atheists fail in their argument. Instead of arguing for their value of X, they try to deny that there is any X.
Eamon Knight @ #26
There’s actually a story in the Talmud that illustrates the point well: the Oven of Akhnai:
Some rabbis are arguing over whether an oven that had been rendered impure can be made pure. All of them say it can’t be except for one, Rabbi Eliezer. (The story gives no substantive arguments regarding the purity or impurity of the oven, showing that that is not the point.)
Rabbi Eliezer enlists some non-human phenomena to demonstrate the rightness of his view: a carob tree leaps some distance, an aqueduct reverses its flow, and the walls of the local academy lean inward. The other rabbis remain unconvinced—leaping trees, reversing flows, and leaning walls do not persuasive arguments make. Finally, Rabbi Eliezer pulls out his ace, enlisting the ultimate authority and, obligingly, the Heavenly Voice intervenes, saying that Rabbi Eliezer’s interpretation of the law is the correct one.
The other rabbis, though, have no problem rejecting God’s authority, saying “It is not in Heaven”—that is, it is up to the rabbis, not God, to decide and to decide by majority vote. God’s not miffed, according to the story, but instead laughs approvingly, saying that his children have bested him.)
Not content with their theological victory, however, the other rabbis overreach, excommunicating Rabbi Eliezar and burning some of the objects he had deemed pure. Various calamities ensue: crops fail; storms occur at sea, almost drowning the rabbinical patriarch.
Some points of the story: (1) you don’t even have to argue with God when it comes to interpreting religious law—he doesn’t get a say; (2) reason and persuasion, rather than miracles, matter; (3) majority (at least of the rabbis) rules; but (4) the majority cannot shame or humiliate those who disagree (i.e., the minority).
I don’t know. Remind me about the facts, in the reality that we live in.
Which one believed in magical forces that guided economic conditions? (Both?) Or which one thought some groups of people were made, again presumably by some magic that doesn’t really exist, to be inferior to other groups? (Both?)
Maybe you want to pick different examples?
Well, in reality, if you’re going to act like you take that seriously for even a moment, they could not both be right — about a whole lot of shit, just as you suggest. I care about what’s true, not just what people believe. If your beliefs are false or aren’t even consistent with your other beliefs (like, for example, a belief that there aren’t any gods) or if they are just patent absurdities, then that is a problem for you.
Anyone who is involved in a discussion about reality doesn’t need to simply take the most naive reading of your beliefs at face value and believe everything you say about them, no matter how absurd your claims about them are. For that matter, since it’s completely irrelevant, we don’t actually need to give a fuck at all about what your ridiculous beliefs happen to be, ridiculous things that they are. We just need to know whether or not it is actually consistent with the facts, like the fact that gods don’t exist. If your beliefs aren’t consistent with the nonexistence of gods, yet you believe they are consistent and identify yourself as such, then you would simply be wrong, whether we were talking about the nonexistence of gods or the price of tea in China. I don’t know how anybody could coherently disagree with that.
And that is certainly possible: it’s possible for a person to be wrong, even about what exact thoughts they are having and everything those exact thoughts entail, even if that person happens to label themselves an “atheist,” since atheists are not special in this respect compared to any other sort of person. More generally, there would indeed be no point in spending any time for thought about anything, if such things were immediately obvious to us without having done the slightest amount of work to check. In any case, stranger things have happened, than people failing to think rationally about what their beliefs actually mean. Besides being possible and not terribly unlikely, that is in fact something that actually happens quite often in the reality that we live in, when it comes to all sorts of whacky ideas people that have but don’t think about very much or very clearly. Get your head out of your ass, and you might notice this phenomenon for yourself.
I also note you’re trying to refute a “should” argument by appealing to what is.
As important as the priest led ceremonies are to the identity as a catholic , the number of priests may soon fall below the critical mass.
Sorry.
@71 grignon
I’m not so sure about that. Here in Spain their numbers are increasing again, after having dropped significantly, because of southamerican and african priests that are literally being imported to fill the gaps.
:-) The bones are bare. No bears were harmed in the making of this metaphor.
That’s not enough in Austria, where Polish and African (Nigerian?) priests are being imported.
Yes, unfortunately. For years, I was friends with a woman who, though raised Catholic, hadn’t been to church for years and claimed to be “not religious, but spiritual.” Then I discovered she doesn’t support separation of church and state, doesn’t support abortion rights, doesn’t think anything about what all those extra (and sometimes deadly) pregnancies will do to women, and thinks all the extra children could could be taken care of by building more orphanages. My horror at picturing her as one of the ghouls watching Savita Halappanavar die increased at the horror of thousands more kids in Irish-style orphanages. I still shudder at how little I actually knew her and at what was behind her kind and friendly facade.