A Pew study released in December found that 29 percent of Americans are usually not affiliated with any religion, up from 16 percent when Pew first asked the query in 2007. (The number of individuals in america who self-identify as Catholic has held regular at 21 percent.) But there isn’t merely a shift in how people express religion publicly. The outlook for private spirituality is similarly bleak. In accordance with Pew, almost a 3rd of U.S. adults report that they pray rarely or under no circumstances, up from 18 percent in 2007.
Young people specifically have distanced themselves from religion. One other survey, released by the Public Religion Research Institute last summer, found that a good higher share of 18- to 29-year-olds, 36 percent, don’t associate with a specific religion. Younger Catholics have also told one research team that they are actually less willing to attend Mass than before the pandemic began.
These statistics are not any surprise; they confirm a longstanding pattern of secularization in america. During the last half-century, academics from various disciplines have written at length (often in these pages) as they have attempted to clarify this dramatic turn away from religion. Meanwhile, dismayed faith leaders and churchgoers alike have been left to ponder whether or not they are members of a dying species of those that look to God for an understanding of the world.
Dismayed faith leaders and churchgoers alike have been left to ponder whether or not they are members of a dying species of those that look to God for an understanding of the world.
Depending on who’s being asked, people have stopped going to church either since the liturgy is just too stuffy and antiquated or since it isn’t as reverent because it was; the church has not done enough to take heed to the faithful’s concerns on L.G.B.T., contraception and abortion issues, or it’s already too accommodating on these fronts; the hierarchy either doesn’t place enough emphasis on pastoral ministries, or it doesn’t pay enough heed to doctrine. Underlying all of this, revelations of widespread sexual abuse and its coverup by religious authorities have significantly dampened the religious practices of American Catholics.
But just as often as certain Catholics look to specific problems with the institutional church to account for increasing secularism, others are inclined to explain it away by blaming it on the morality of nonbelievers themselves. Some consider people don’t go to church because they’re lazy, while others consider it’s because church teaching is antiquated. Whether it is laziness, there is no such thing as a point in attempting to welcome back wayward Catholics; there is no such thing as a cure for sloth. Whether it is outdated church teaching, the temptation is to say the church simply must get with the times, and the lost shall be found. Neither way of considering offers much inspiration for the church’s evangelical mission.
But what if there may be a unique approach to take a look at the decline of spiritual practice in america? Have the “nones” consciously rejected religion, or have religious institutions did not involve them and reply to their needs? Do they lack belief in God, or do they not see the church as representing the God they consider in? Has a mix of all of those aspects gotten us to where we’re today, with each society and the church sharing some responsibility?
Have the “nones” consciously rejected religion, or have religious institutions did not involve them and reply to their needs? The one approach to discover is by asking.
The one approach to discover is by asking, and the Catholic Church is attempting to do precisely that. Pope Francis announced that the meeting in 2023 of the Synod of Bishops—because the culmination of a three-year worldwide process—would deal with finding ways to make the church one which “walks together” as an alternative of one which follows the lead of a select few. The pope is encouraging the church to examine itself more creatively because the body of Christ. The church mustn’t be characterised by a hierarchy exerting its power over the laity, he has urged, but by charitable dialogue amongst all bishops, priests, deacons, laypeople and non secular, in addition to with the broader world.
Pope Francis has made it clear that the diocesan phase of this synod mustn’t be limited only to individuals who show as much as Mass every Sunday. As an alternative, the synod’s preparatory document calls for listening not only throughout the visible structures of the church but in addition in encounters with “people who find themselves distant from the religion” and with the “poor and excluded” (No. 29). Only by listening to those on the margins can the church truly be universal.
To that end, all diocesan leaders coordinating the primary phase of preparation for the Synod of Bishops should make a concerted effort to achieve out to those people who find themselves disaffiliated with religion, especially lapsed or nonpracticing Christians. Many dioceses have already set forth detailed plans to incorporate marginalized groups within the synod, but these efforts ought to not be limited to a handful of local churches.
Only by listening to those on the margins can the church truly be universal.
The voices of the nones are crucial for understanding where the church has lost people on each the local and global levels—for the way can we bring people back into the church if we don’t even know why they left in the primary place? By listening to those that feel alienated from Christianity and even apathetic to it, the church will make great inroads in learning about those facets of pastoral outreach that it needs to enhance.
Just because the church has much to learn from these lost sheep, it also has much to supply them in return. Engaging nones within the synod offers a chief opportunity for evangelization—not through proselytizing but by demonstrating accompaniment and dialogue in practice, and by offering an example of how the church can live out its mission of helping the downtrodden and outcast.
Within the months since America first reported how inconsistently U.S. dioceses were preparing for the synod, there was some progress in solidifying plans for the listening phase. Going forward, U.S. dioceses must maintain this momentum. It’s a large and difficult undertaking, however the church in america must not succumb to the temptation to treat the synod as if it were merely one other chore. Synodality should remain on the forefront of diocesan and parochial consciousness for years to come back.
With a 3rd of Americans estranged from organized religion, there is no such thing as a time to lose. It’s ultimately only God’s grace that may bring people back to the religion. Even so, all members of the church have a responsibility to do as much as they’ll to bring God’s people back to himself—and there is maybe no higher approach to do that than through the present churchwide synodal process.
