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Living the Faith

As we come to an end, we now can look at some of the quantitative participation of lay Catholics in the sacramental life. Before the Second Vatican Council, approximately 75% of Catholics attended Mass on Sundays. As of 2004, approximately 32% of American Catholics attend Mass every Sunday. On any given Sunday as many as 40% of American Catholics may be attending Mass even though some of them do not attend Mass regularly. Thus there are only more or less half as many Catholics attending Mass now as before the Council. This may also suggest that there really is no priest shortage at all, although there clearly is a surplus of Church buildings since the practicing congregations are nowhere as near as large. This accounts for the multiple closings of parishes, particularly in large metropolitan areas, over the last fifteen years.

More distressing is the American custom of reception of Holy Communion by virtually every layperson who attends Mass on Sunday. Given the dramatic decline in the reception of the Sacrament of Penance and the drop in belief in the Divine Presence in the Eucharist, there must be many objectively sacrilegious communions. Much catechetical work needs to be done.

Of interest from a cultural viewpoint are the changing voting patterns of American Catholics over the last 40 years. Since the 1960s, there has been a clear shift towards the Republican party and away from the Democratic party by Catholic voters. When the polls differentiate between church-going and non-church-going Catholics, Republicans dominate by a wider margin among the church-going, and Democrats among the non-church-going. I would extrapolate that the more orthodox in belief and regular in church attendance the Catholic American, the more likely he is to vote for Republicans, whose national platform, particularly on non-negotiable matters such as abortion, homosexual marriage, and embryonic experimentation, is more in sync with the Church's teachings.

How do American Catholics currently live out the moral aspects of marriage and family? The statistics available are somewhat less exact. Catholics are 30 percent less likely to divorce than the rest of the population. Active Catholics are 50% less likely to divorce than unaffiliated/secular Americans. About 20% of all Catholic marriages in which at least one spouse attends Mass weekly end in divorce.

Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, Catholics tend to contracept at the same rate as the rest of the world. Hence the number of children per Catholic family is not significantly different from that of non-Catholics. Catholics tend to have fewer abortions than the rest of the population, but not by a large percentage. The key in interpreting all such statistics is how to define "Catholic." On these moral issues, there is a huge difference between the Catholic who worships weekly and the one who attends a few times a year. I would suggest that one of the major issues for the Church in the decades ahead will be clarity as to who is considered a practicing Catholic and who is not. This may result in a smaller but much more fervent and evangelizing Church, ready to carry out the New Evangelization in the United States that can bear so much fruit in the 25 years ahead, both at home and throughout the globe.

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