KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter
September 16, 2020
By Madeleine Davison
James Holzhauer-Chuckas is the senior director of the United Catholic Youth Ministries at four parishes in Evanston, Illinois, and a Benedictine oblate who once thought of becoming a priest. He’s a proud Catholic — the last one “standing” in his family, he told NCR, after his parents and siblings left the church amid the clergy sex abuse crisis and disagreements with the church’s stance on LGBTQ rights.
He’s also a bit of a statistical anomaly — a child of unaffiliated parents who identifies as Catholic. Among today’s teenagers, the trend usually goes in the other direction, according to new research.
A Pew Research Center study released Sept. 10 suggests that most American teens share religious identities and faith practices with their parents, but that teenagers are much less likely than their parents to say religion is very important to them.
For instance, nearly half of all teens say they hold all the same religious beliefs as their parents, and most have gone to religious services with at least one parent. But while 43% of parents said religion is “very important” to them, just 24% of teens said the same.
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