UNITED STATES
Irish Central
Frances Mulraney @FrancesMulraney September 21, 2016
US Catholics who have left the church don’t believe they could be tempted to return, according to a survey by Pew Research Center, carried out in 2015, examining American Catholics and family life.
In the lead up to Pope Francis’ US visit at the end of September 2015, the survey also revealed that although the number of practicing Catholics in the US may be dropping, the number of people affiliated in some way with the Church is in fact rising, be it through their parents, a spouse or some other cultural connection.
For a long time, a quarter of the US population was made up of Catholics but the new Pew survey shows that this dropped to 20.8 per cent in 2014 from 23.9 per cent in 2007.
Many Americans brought up as Catholics are turning their backs on the faith for a number of reasons. Seventy-seven per cent of those who have left say they could never envision returning to the Church and gave no clear indication that any change to Church teachings would make them reconsider this.
The survey showed that as many as half those who were raised as Catholics left at some point in their lives, although 11 per cent did return.
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