Monday, April 27, 2009

Holy Intersections

Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life has released a new study, Faith in Flux: Changes in the Religious Affiliation in the U.S. Among the interesting findings is one unearthed by Mark Gray from the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA). Mark notes that when people were asked the open-ended question, why did you leave the church, only two-three percent cited the sexual abuse crisis. (If you suggest sex abuse as the reason about 25 percent agree.)

The crisis has been so horrific that when Mark pointed it how few cited it, I was surprised. It just feels like it must be more. That may be the effect of media coverage. When you read something in the newspaper it can seem bigger than life. As big as the sex abuse crisis is, media can make it look even bigger.

In some ways, like politics, all religion is local. People make judgments on the church based on the priest at Mass, the chaplain in the hospital, the cleric at the funeral home, the deacon who performed the baptism – at the holy intersections – the significant and tender moments in their lives.

1 comment:

Kelly Thatcher said...

Interesting post, Sister. However, your surprise...surprises me. Long before the abuse crisis hit the headlines, most Catholics in Boston -- the ground zero of the scandal -- didn't attend Mass on Sundays.

According to a Boston Globe/WBZ-TV poll published by the Globe, not even 4 in 10 local Catholics were "weekly churchgoers" back in late 2001-early 2002.

As you well know, Sunday Mass participation is not an option.

The Pew Research report tells us that "Catholics who leave their faith say they drifted away from the church because it did not meet their spiritual needs or they stopped believing in its teachings..." [my emphasis]. And that "Former Catholics who are now unaffiliated often said they left because of disagreements with the Catholic Church over homosexuality, abortion, birth control, or gender."

You wrote:

People make judgments on the church based on the priest at Mass, the chaplain in the hospital, the cleric at the funeral home, the deacon who performed the baptism – at the holy intersections – the significant and tender moments in their lives.Maybe so. But maybe Catholics need to be reminded of Who is far more significant than the "Holy Intersections" in their lives: an unambiguous appreciation for and devotion to the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.