UNITED STATES
WGBH
[with audio]
By Anne Mostue
Catholicism in America can be described in various ways: in numbers, movements and emotion.
“I go every holy day of obligation,” said one area Catholic. “It means a lot to me, to take part in the sacraments.”
But approximately one third of those who say they were raised Catholic are no longer practicing the religion. That’s according to the Pew Religious Landscape Survey. “Disconnect” is one word used by Jim Crowley, a 62-year-old Brighton resident, who says he’s drifted from the parish of his childhood.
“Twelve years of schooling right over there, St. Columbkille’s,” Crowley said.
Crowley stopped going to Church in high school, but still went through the sacraments of confirmation and marriage in the church.
“I became over the years more spiritual than religious, so I don’t follow a lot of the orchestrated dictates and I don’t agree with a lot of their policies and procedures,” he said. “Not allowing women, not allowing priests to marry. So I never became angry at God, I just became fed up with the people he left in charge.”
Crowley said he isn’t referring to the sex abuse scandal, just leadership and dogma in general. He, along with many Catholics, are questioning whether the church is relevant in a country that’s increasingly accepting gay marriage, divorce, and women in positions of power. In fact, Pew research shows that the sex abuse crisis has little to do with Catholics leaving the faith. Seventy-one percent of those interviewed in 2007 said they drifted away from the church because it wasn’t meeting their spiritual needs. That is precisely the target audience of Catholics Come Home, a campaign started by Catholic lay people. …
But the campaign faces scrutiny, especially from those who want the Vatican and church leaders to take more responsibility for the ongoing sexual abuse crisis.
“Apologies have been made,” said Terry McKiernan, founder of the website BishopAccountability.org, and a practicing Catholic himself. “But if you look at the CatholicsComeHome.org website, or if you go to most of the diocesan websites and look at how they’re trying to entice people to come home, the sexual abuse crisis is for the most part invisible. Their approach has been to pretend that it’s all over, it’s been dealt with, move along, it will be fine. And I think they’re making a huge mistake.”
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