GALLUP: US Church membership declining FAST

Of course it is. On a practical level, the church has declared itself non-essential.

I have seen in a number of videos and print, excellent priests like Fr Mark Goring, Fr Chris Alar, Mgr. Charles Pope plus others, all state, off the cuff, the same thing: they wonder if humanity is too far gone to be corrected by “usual” means, ie. a more blunt Divine instrument is needed, sooner rather than later.

I think they may be right.

In many places the Church’s priests and bishops do not practice what they preach. The last year has pointed a very bright spotlight on that problem.

How many times have you went to Mass and heard a sermon about how we need bring back those things in our liturgy which has been lost. Right after to be presented with a lay woman walk into the sanctuary followed by banal music, lay people bringing up “gifts” (not offerings for the sacrifice, but gifts) and presented to female “acolytes.”

There is ZERO surprise at the declining numbers of people who believe in the real presence. The priests, bishops and lay people have allowed the Mass to become a confraternity instead of the worship of God. Most of the outward signs and actions have been changed to point towards Man instead of God.

I have been “forced” to attend the Novus Ordo due to a family situation for the last year or so. Every Sunday I leave Mass feeling cheated for I know what I am missing. I hear a homily that is a complaint about of current secular situation. I almost never hear a homily about the Gospel and how it can be bring me closer to our Lord.

I still attend Mass, but I tend to sit in the Nave or very back of the Church. I don’t want anyone else to see my discomfort. Maybe I should be thankful that I can attend Mass at all. It is just so very hard to attend and I do so out of obligation more than desire.

All the Latin Mass times are either way too early for our family (7:30am or ealier) or way too late (12:30pm or after), or we need to drive more than an hour. The few times I have been able to attend the last year have been on Holy Days when the TLM is placed at the desired time. I can then take off work to attend. When it is over I feel again like I am returning to the desert.

I fear for our society. Without moral leadership we will be the new babylon. In many ways we are already there.

While the numbers of those who associate with a SPECIFIC house of worship declining is a sad testament to modernity, there is one facet of the numbers that is quite interesting, as a reversal of what the left would like to claim:

College graduate vs not-college graduate. IN 2000, the Nots slightly edged out the graduates, 69% to 68%, in having a specific house of worship. In 2010, the Graduates dropped some to 65%, but the Nots plummeted to 60%. By 2020, the Nots continued their precipitous (almost cliff-like) decline to 47% while graduates dropped to 54%.

Yes, both groups declined a LOT. But here’s the funny thing: 97% of college graduates are getting their “education” (if you don’t want to call it brainwashing) from leftist-controlled edu-ganda system, and EVEN SO the majority of them still associate with a specific house of worship. (And some (small) additional percentage still hold to a religion, just not one specific house, such as church-shoppers). Oddly enough, the entertainment system of modern media in TV and movies, which is the single largest mind-molding force on adults not in college, is FAR more able to sever believers from their churches than even the lock-step leftist-controlled universities. Go figure. The old-style secular humanist atheist predictions that religion will simply shrivel up and disappear into a cloud of dust when everyone gets educated turn out to be rather inaccurate.

(I have not attempted to factor in the decline in church-goers’ actual effective belief in anything that requires them to act differently than secular humanists, and the resulting de facto situation that a lot of “churches” are simply holding pens for secular humanists who are only nominally Christians (or Jews) and just don’t recognize it. It would be interesting to find out how many of those church-goers could even recognize a concrete contradiction between secular leftist policy and Christian theology/belief if it bit them on the rear.)

The fact that more non-college graduates than college graduates are leaving is further evidence of our failure to connect the Church with the working class.

We used to be so much better at that.

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There is so much to unwrap in these statistics, but certainly lack of catechesis is an issue. We don’t go to Mass to hear nice songs or a nice homily. We to to Mass to participate in the celebration of the Eucharist. Of course, that question is not part of the survey, because it would mean nothing to Protestants.

But as Father Z. has pointed out so many times, Mass for many Catholics has become a meaningless ritual.

I live in a very liberal community with a very liberal congregation, and so the music is truly awful and the sermons are dull, and have been for many years. But that’s not why I go to Mass. But I’m an oddball in the parish.