UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage
William D. Lindsey
I’ve blogged a number of times recently about what seems to me a crucially important question: how do those Catholics who remain with the church, and how do the pastoral leaders of the church, intend to deal with the ever-increasing phenomenon of disaffiliation of American Catholics from the Catholic church–or, as some folks now put it, of “deconversion” from the Catholic church? My recent reflections on this important issue are here and here.
As I’ve noted repeatedly on this blog (and so I won’t rehearse this matter at length or provide links now–this research is easy to find on this blog and in many other places), as of 2004, Pew Foundation data indicated that one in three American adults who had been raised Catholic has left the Catholic church, and one in ten American adults is now a former Catholic. As commentators have noted, if all those former Catholics constituted a denomination, that denomination would be the second largest Christian denomination in the U.S.
I am not aware of similar studies since 2004. My intuition is that the numbers have grown–even considerably–since 2004. My intuition is that they may well be growing larger right now due to the outrageous partisan political behavior of the U.S. Catholic bishops in recent weeks, their attack on the human rights of gay and lesbian persons, their attacks on the healthcare needs of women, etc.
And my intuition is that the number of Catholics walking away may also be increasing due to the complicity of influential “liberal” Catholic centrist media and academic commentators with the bishops in their recent immoral actions in the public square. For my own part, I can say I’m very much alienated by those centrist fellow Catholics who continue to provide cover for the bishops in their immoral actions.
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