The recent Pew survey on religion found that 10 percent of American adults describe themselves as ex-Catholics. That is a very large number, over 20 million. Almost as alarming, according to Catholic Answers, the nation's largest Catholic Internet community, "anywhere from one-third to one-half of many fundamentalist congregations once belonged to the Catholic church." And in the Southwest, "with its substantial Hispanic population, former Catholics are the congregation."
These numbers support my own experience in the classroom, where a disproportionate number of students tell stories of why they left the Catholic church.
There are at least three reasons for the exodus.
1) Fundamentalist Protestantism powerfully appeals to people looking for an easy and certain ride to eternal life. All one has to do is to believe in five fundamentals of the faith: the infallibility of scripture; the deity of Jesus, born of a virgin; Jesus' atonement for our sins on the cross; his bodily resurrection following his death; and his second coming. What anchors these beliefs is a one-to-one personal relation with Jesus as lord and savior. Once achieved, there is no more worry, no matter how grievously one has sinned or will sin. The rest of the world, including Christians, especially Catholics, who have not had this experience, may find themselves in hell for eternity, but the "true Christian" will go directly to heaven at death, his sins entirely wiped clean.
Catholicism does not offer such assurance. Faith in doctrine is not enough, and many sins are defined as "mortal." Even if one dies as a "good Catholic," there is no instantaneous entry into heaven. Purgatory intervenes. Then there are the strictures surrounding the sacraments, especially the warning to avoid holy Communion for unabsolved sins. So many ways to wander off the path. And so much danger if one does.
Simple, anxious, often uneducated souls are easy prey to a charismatic pastor who tells them the Catholic way is unnecessarily complex, artificial and rule-bound.
No wonder Catholics are leaving the faith for fundamentalism.
2) But there is more than an aggressive fundamentalism accountable for the downturn. Many Catholics, especially whites, are defecting for the same reasons that Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Lutherans and Methodists are defecting from their churches. They find problems within the religion. The sense of meeting God in church that I enjoyed as a boy and young man is usually missing these days. The romance of religion, the sense of awe in the presence of the Divine is seldom evident--not in the liturgy, not in the sermon, not in the music, not even in the dress. In my youth, Catholics made "visits" to church during the week to pray quietly by themselves, and these "visits" were often times of deep spiritual experience. Sometime in the '70s, "visits" stopped being something that Catholics did.
The Second Vatican Council rattled many a Catholic. Superficial believers held in place by fear of hell suddenly realized that men, and not God, were at the helm of a thoroughly human institution, and many left because they were no longer afraid to. But the deeper spirits left for the reason pointed out above: They weren't getting anything out of their religion. Many found a new spiritual home in some sort of Eastern or New Age spirituality, quite a few in the more accepting environment of Anglicanism. Many, regrettably, became atheists. These trends continue today.
3) Finally, the Catholic church is losing members because of poor leadership. The child sex abuse scandal that surfaced in Boston in 2002 was the last straw for many U.S. Catholics already fretting over Vatican decrees on such matters as divorce and birth control. The church seemed to them like an out-of-touch bully quick to exclude and punish--the very opposite of a Christ presence urging forgiveness seven times 70.
But an even bigger problem today is the shortage of priests. Fifty years ago average-sized churches had three to five priests to share the work. Now the work too often falls on only one man, the beleaguered pastor. Our overworked priests are exhausted, torn in a hundred directions, spiritually undernourished, and too often burned out. As a result, parishes are relying more and more on "supply clergy." Usually these are foreign-born, speak poor English, and have almost no understanding of the culture they've been thrown into.
Another casualty of the priest shortage is the religious education of our youth. Our children aren't getting good instruction in the faith, especially in confirmation classes. Too often, these are taught by any adult who volunteers, and smart kids just aren't buying what they are told. The in-depth instruction I received as a boy from priests and nuns is missing. My son came back from his first confirmation class convinced that he was wasting his time. Well, not quite. "There was a pool table, foosball, a big-screen TV and cute girls." In contrast, his Mormon friends were getting daily instruction before school started from well-prepared volunteers. Mormonism is growing by leaps and bounds in Bakersfield. But the population of church-attending Catholics has only slightly increased since I arrived here years ago, although the city has grown fivefold during that time.
There are other reasons the church is losing ground, but these three strike me as the most basic.
[Stafford Betty is professor of religious studies at California State University at Bakersfield.]
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