Why have Catholics in the UK and US been leaving the Church since Vatican II?

Theologian and sociologist Stephen Bullivant says a big part of his argument in Mass Exodus is “that the ‘social architecture’ that had sustained and strengthened Catholic life and identity was well on the road to passing away by the time the Council came along.”

(Image: Andrew Dong | Unsplash.com)

Stephen Bullivant is Professor of Theology and the Sociology of Religion at St. Mary’s University in London, where is also Director of the Benedict XVI Centre for Religion and Society. He studied theology and philosophy at the University of Oxford, and prior to joining St Mary’s in 2009 he held posts at Wolfson College, Oxford, and Heythrop College. He is the author of several books and numerous essays on topics including faith and skepticism, atheism, the Trinity, and Catholic spirituality.

His most recent book is Mass Exodus: Catholic Disaffiliation in Britain and America Since Vatican II (Oxford University Press, 2019), which is “a comparative study of secularization across two famously contrasting religious cultures: Britain and the USA.” He recently corresponded with CWR about his research into Catholic lapsation and disaffiliation over the past several decades.

CWR: Tell us about your background

Stephen Bullivant: I’m a British college professor (at St Mary’s University in London) in my mid-30s, with three young children. My original studies were in philosophy and theology: I completed a theology doctorate at Oxford on Vatican II’s engagement with atheism and secularity in 2009. For too-long-to-explain reasons, though, I’ve always had what you might call a “side hustle” in sociology, and that’s become a bigger and bigger part of my work over the past few years. I finally got round to getting a second PhD in the sociology of religion this summer, from the University of Warwick. I’ve published some short books over the past few years, on topics from the Trinity to the Fátima prayer to an Oxford Dictionary of Atheism – but, alongside all that, I’ve been chipping away at bits of evidence and argument that I’ve finally managed to crystallize into one big, “proper” book.

On a more personal note, since I dare say it’s relevant here, I was brought up a “none,” began my university studies in theology as a Bertrand Russell-inspired atheist, then – long story! – was baptized and received into the Catholic Church while a grad student in 2008. My wife of 12 years, raised an Anglican, followed two years later. She’s also a college professor: in music history at Oxford, working at the moment on Edward Elgar (England’s national composer and also a Catholic).

CWR: What led you to writing Mass Exodus: Catholic Disaffiliation in Britain and America Since Vatican II?

Bullivant: For a Catholic theologian/sociologist, who works a lot on atheism, indifference, secularity, and related topics, the topic of the new evangelization is of great interest to me — including how and why we got to the point of needing a new evangelization in the first place. From the sociological side there is an overwhelming need to understand secularization and religious change/decline, and the period around the 1960s is of particular importance.

CWR: Your introduction says that leavers from Catholicism outnumber converts to it by 10:1 in the UK. You describe these people as disaffiliates and the process as disaffiliation. Tell us a bit about why you opted for those terms and how you understand the relationship between belief, belonging, and practice.

Bullivant: The book foregrounds affiliation – that is, how people identify, religiously speaking – for a number of reasons. In the first place, it’s normally the last thing to go. As we know all too well, there are lots of people who no longer believe anything especially Catholic (or even Christian), and who haven’t been to church or prayed in many years, who nevertheless still feel that they’re “Catholic” to some degree – at least to the extent of ticking a box on surveys.  But the phenomenon of large numbers of people who were raised (to varying degrees) as Catholics, who no longer even feel connected to the Church to a very minimal extent: that seems to me to symbolize quite an important shift. So disaffiliation (i.e., having previously regarded oneself as Catholic, but no longer doing so) is being used as effectively the extreme case of lapsation.

It’s important for two other reasons, too. Catholic identity has, for a long time, been (I think rightly) viewed as being especially tenacious – ‘tribal belonging’, you might say. This is the idea that “once a Catholic, always a Catholic” (which is, I might add, absolutely still the case in terms of sacramental theology): that being brought up Catholic ingrains something in you that, even if you no longer believe or practice, is hard to shake. With the growth of disaffiliation, however, we’re beginning to see how that “Catholic difference” has, over the past couple of generations largely dissolved away. It only works if you get a sufficient dose of normative Catholic belief and practice when growing up. But that has, for all sorts of reasons, become rarer and rarer over the past decades. “Cultural Catholicism” in this sense doesn’t survive more than one generation. And this is a pattern we see a great deal: practising, believing grandparents; non-practicing or irregularly practicing parents who still feel Catholic, baptize their kids, and perhaps send them to Catholic schools; but then the most recent generation who’ve basically only inherited a weak or “dead” strain of Catholicism, which means nothing to them, and perhaps inoculates them against ever catching a live strain.

And finally, the “rise of the nones”, which we hear so much about these days. (The book I’m currently working on, called Nonverts, is looking at precisely this phenomenon across the whole US religious landscape.) These nones or unaffiliateds – who now make up about a quarter of the US adult population, and a third of the under-30s – are precisely the result of this long-term processes of disaffiliation and secularization, played out across various US Christian denominations.   

CWR: Tell us a bit about how you came to narrow your study to the US and the UK, and why.

Bullivant: Two main reasons. The first is purely practical. I live in Britain, and spend as much time as I can possibly get away with in the USA. I know both contexts reasonably well, and am fairly well up on the sociology and social history of both Catholicism and various forms of “nonreligion” in both countries. With the kind of depth I wanted to go into in the book I didn’t really feel I could do more than two countries. That said, I am very interested in the various ways in which the arguments of Mass Exodus would or wouldn’t apply to other places.

More than that though, Britain and America have long been juxtaposed in both academic and popular writing as religious polar opposites: with the former typifying “godless Europe”, and the latter more-or-less still justifying Alexis de Tocqueville’s assessment nearly 200 years ago that “there remains here a greater foundation of Christianity than in any other country in the world”. Given that the two countries share so much in terms of language, culture, and history, I thought it would be a fruitful comparison to see how some of the same factors played out differently in each.

CWR: You nicely frame one of the key Catholic debates of the last fifty years as “post concilium ergo propter concilium?” You note that Catholics generally divide into “three broad tendencies” in how they answer that question. Give us a brief sense of those tendencies and whether you think one of them has stronger arguments than the others.

Bullivant: In very rough, stereotyping terms: There are those who chiefly blame something – normally something liturgical, but not necessarily—that Vatican II directly brought about, whether intentionally or not. Then there are those who chiefly blame some stifling, thwarting, or mitigating of the Council’s positive vision – Humanae Vitae is often the culprit here, often as the harbinger of some bigger “conservative crackdown” under John Paul II and Benedict XVI. And finally, there are those who really play down there being a Catholic-specific story to tell at all, pointing instead to wider social and cultural trends already well afoot before the Council, and affecting many of other mainstream denominations too.

One of the real motivations for writing the book was my conviction that, actually, each of these basic stances has a good deal going for it. Which is why, I suppose, serious scholars and commentators can be cited in support of each.  What I try to do in the second half of the book is to offer an historical account of British and American Catholicism “since Vatican II” – though, in fact, to do that you have to start with the Second World War and its aftermath, since neither the Council nor its aftermath make any sense without that background.

That brief description perhaps makes the last four chapters sound a lot more boring than (I hope) they actually are. The progress – or rather, ultimately, regress – of postwar and then post-conciliar Catholicism in Britain and America is a fascinating story in its own right. And I hope I’ve retained enough of the interest and (occasionally) entertainment in trying to narrate it, while underpinning the logic of it with a handful of key sociological ideas (all explained clearly and interestingly for the non-sociologists!).

That appeal to theory is important. It’s notoriously difficult to assign causation within history (hence ‘post hoc, propter hoc’), but equally I don’t think history is best understood as being simply “one damned thing after another”. By appealing to some well-established principles of sociological theory we can, at least, make a plausible argument as to how “one damned thing” caused – or went some way towards causing, in combination with a whole host of other, mutually interacting “damned things” – another.

CWR: In his 1967 lectures at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne later published as Secularization and Moral Change, Alasdair MacIntyre argued that industrialization and urbanization were the major drivers of changes in moral views and religious practices in the UK from the end of the Victorian era onward. Does your research delve into the role played by socioeconomic factors, and if so how prominent are they?

Bullivant: Wider socioeconomic factors are a very major part of the story in both countries. The immediate postwar period, especially, saw some very profound social changes: the Baby Boom, suburbanization, slum clearance and urban renewal, growing prosperity (not least in the form of car and television ownership), new educational opportunities with the GI Bill in the US, and the expansion of university places and funding in Britain: all these and more were having subtle but far-reaching effects on many areas of life, very much including Catholic religious life. One big argument of the book is that the Council’s reforms, and especially the chaotic nature of their implementation, were largely a response to these kinds of factors. Also important here is that, in the wake of the 1960s, religious groups were not merely passive in the face of wider social, cultural, and economic trends. A big argument of the book is that, in fact, a great deal of what the Church has tried to do has been counter-productive, making the pastoral situation significantly worse than it could otherwise have been.

CWR: In your chapter “Why They Say They Leave,” you review different studies from different decades. Are there continuities in the answers people give as to why they leave, or do different eras have significantly different reasons?

Bullivant: There are a great many reasons people give, although they do tend to group into certain themes. Generally speaking, they hold fairly consistent across both time and space, albeit with different emphases.

I draw particularly on four detailed surveys on lapsed and/or “former” Catholics. One sponsored by the American Bishops’ Conference in the late 70s, two undertaken in the past few years by a couple of US dioceses (Springfield, IL, and Trenton, NJ), and one that Hannah Vaughan-Spruce, Catherine Knowles, Berna Durcan and I did in the English Diocese of Portsmouth in 2015 (the full book-length write-up of which has also just been published by Paulist Press: Why Catholics Leave, What They Miss, and How They Might Return).

CWR: One of the things people are expecting in the aftermath of McCarrick and other revelations is that more and more Catholics will disaffiliate from the Church. But your last chapter shows that the sex abuse crisis has been a factor for quite some time, and headlines about abuse, like other factors, do not always play out in a straightforward causal manner, yes?

Bullivant: Yes, I think that’s a fair summary of my position. In the book I dwell a lot on 2002 and the Boston Globe revelations, and then more briefly – literally it was all going on as I was writing it – talk about 2018.    

What we don’t tend to see in the immediate aftermath of new revelations is an immediate, significant, permanent fall in, say, Mass attendance. This makes sense if you think about it, because the people likely to be most deeply hit by shame and anger are practising Catholics. But ipso facto, they’re also the ones with the strongest other reasons to stay.

But what we do see coming out in people’s own testimonies is a kind of slow-burn distancing from the Church in the wake of these scandals. That may manifest itself in a gradual lessening of Mass attendance, or ultimately not going at all and possibly looking into other churches.

The Mass attendance statistics in the wake of 2002 seem to bear this out. (Incidentally, I went to a great deal of effort to try to track down accurate Mass counts for every US diocese for the book. All the statistics I managed to obtain are given in an Appendix, which is a fascinating record in itself.) What we see in a fair few dioceses is a slight but clearly noticeable sharpening of the average annual rate of decline from October 2002 onwards. It’s not the only possible explanation of the data, but I think it’s a reasonable one.

CWR: Your fourth chapter, “The Night Before,” has to go back to the decades before Vatican II, and it draws on what I found to be an unexpectedly hugely fascinating book, David Kynaston’s Austerity Britain 1945-1951, which helped me understand what my Glaswegian grandparents lived through. My grandmother often mentioned the very strong sense of “close-knit community life” in parishes that you mention in the late 1940s and 1950s. What are some of the factors that have caused the disappearance of that in many places, leading one of my students (who left the Church for an evangelical church) to call the Catholic parishes she once attended “anonymous sacramental gas stations”?

Bullivant: Several factors, on both sides of the Atlantic, combined to erode those classic, urban Catholic neighborhoods That’s a very big part of the book’s argument: i.e., that the “social architecture” that had sustained and strengthened Catholic life and identity was well on the road to passing away by the time the Council came along.

The full story is too big to précis in any detail here, but consider just one US case. Suppose you were brought up in an inner-city Polish or Italian neighborhood in the 20s or 30s in somewhere like Chicago or Milwaukee, where the parish was the centre of social and cultural and educational and (quite probably) sporting life just as much as it was of your religious life. Then you go off to war, meet – and live and serve alongside – non-Catholics for the first time. Maybe you meet a girl while stationed somewhere – the first romantic interest you’ve ever properly spoken to not from your or a neighboring parish. Anyway, you come back from war with much wider horizons than you left with, and – thanks to the GI Bill – the prospect of going off to college. When you do get married you’re a) significantly more likely, on average, to be marrying a non-Catholic than in your parents’ generation; and b) unlikely to be moving back to your home neighborhood. You’re a graduate now, remember, and hey – don’t those new suburban communities look just a swell place to raise Junior? When they do get round to building a proper Catholic Church in Levittown – a Catholic school was the main priority – it’s a good couple of miles away. And while you have got a shiny new car to get to Sunday Mass, there’s plenty of more exciting places you can drive to in it than the just the round of parish rosary sodalities and fish fries that your parents still frequent back home.

I could go on, but you get the picture: Junior is brought up in a very, very different world than you were, and even if you’re still faithful Massgoers, it’s a far less close-knit parish than your parents’ was. (Their parish, incidentally, ends up being merged with several others in the 1980s, before being sold off as luxury condos – as, I might add, was the Chicago church that adorns the front cover of Mass Exodus).

CWR: I read with keen interest the details in your fifth chapter on liturgical changes at and after the council along with the decline in Marian devotion and fasting. You seem to suggest that all these changes (and others) were damaging to what Mary Douglas calls “thick” religious identity and the take-it-for-grantedness of Catholic life. Do you see any ways to repair some of this damage?

Bullivant: Well, a great deal of the damage cannot simply be undone. The whole rich tapestry of Catholic devotional life was very swiftly torn away. But a re-emphasis on things like the rosary, lighting candles for sick friends, reinstating Friday fasting (as the bishops of England and Wales did a few years ago) – all the little day-to-day things that were de-emphasized because they (supposedly) distractions from the Mass, but which in truth help the “source and summit” to stand out even more clearly. All these are things that, I think, could be easily rediscovered. In fact, I think that’s what a lot of younger Catholics are doing by themselves anyway. I believe it’s what the Fathers of Vatican II would have called a ressourcement.

CWR: Tell us a bit about your hopes for the book, and who would benefit from reading it

Bullivant: There are two implied audiences, I suppose. Catholic people who take a keen interest in how the Church is, and how it got here – and coming from all kinds of starting assumption about what the real ‘answer’ is. If I’ve done my job right, then everyone will come away with something worthwhile from it.

And academics and students with an interest in either Catholic theology, sociology, and/or social history, or more broadly, on religious change in Britain or the US (the book is a kind of case study of how big-picture secularizing trends get played out).

CWR: Having finished such a book as this, what is next for you? What are you working on now?

Bullivant: Working on too many things. The next book I’m hoping to finish up is the one I mentioned earlier – looking at “nonverts” from all kinds of denominational backgrounds, from right across the USA. One of the fun parts of my job this past couple of years had been travelling round the States – New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Oregon, Louisiana, Florida – interviewing America nonreligious folks, but who were brought up in some religion, with all manner of stories to tell. Something else I’m working on is essentially a sequel to Mass Exodus, looking at “signs of hope” within the Church (focusing on just the UK this time). With one of my other hats on, I’m also co-editing a big, two-volume Cambridge History of Atheism with the philosopher of science Michael Ruse. So keeping out of trouble, mostly.


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About Dr. Adam A. J. DeVille 110 Articles
Dr. Adam A. J. DeVille is associate professor at the University of Saint Francis in Ft. Wayne, IN., where he also maintains a part-time private practice in psychotherapy. He is the author and editor of several books, including Orthodoxy and the Roman Papacy (University of Notre Dame, 2011).

32 Comments

  1. Speaking only about the issue of why Catholics are leaving the Church because of the sex scandals, my response has been; so you will throw away a perfectly good Rolls Royce simply because the motor pool has been sending us inept chauffer’s?
    What kind of faith could you have had to toss away paradise for eternity and buy damnation, because some others choose to sin?

    • Don L
      With the greatest respect I disagree with the analogy you have used. A car is just a car, faith is about eternity. I think it is highly possible for someone to walk from the church, not the faith upon discovering that a priest is an abuser. Reason suggests that if a priest truly believes, he could not willingly and repeatedly harm an innocent. If he can do this, then I think it is logical to assume that the priest does not believe. What we are left with is a sham, and in that scenario it is perfectly tenable for a person to walk away and follow Christ in their own way. What has to be kept in context is that these abuses did not happen in isolation. Very often they were accompanied with money abuses, favouritism and other behaviors at odds with someone who believes in a final judgement. À

      • Teresa, I think you have conflated the priest and the church. Yes, the priest may not believe, but he may actually believe. He just may be an egregious sinner. And we are all sinners. Christ is in the church and its sacraments. If you walk away from the church, you are walking away from Christ.
        I dont believe anyone can “follow Christ in their own way”. If that was possible, there would be no need for the Church

        • The priest is a sinner (a really evil pervert who deserves to be drowned with stone tied around his neck according to Christ), but his fellow priests bishops, cardinals who said nothing and covered it up and shuffled the perverts around and witnessed and whispered about the widespread perversion and sodomy in the seminaries are all sinnners too.

          That does not leave a whole lot of good priests. Show me where they are and I will follow their religion.

          I am not going to listen to priests who decided to stay silent while children and adolescents were being raped and manipulated into abusive sexual relationships.

          And MOST of the clergy are guilty of that. They KNEW IT WAS going on and they admit this. But they kept the code of silence.

          And THAT is the mosg scandalous and disgusting part of all, because the whole of the hierarchy are guilty, right up to the Popes.

  2. “Why have Catholics in the UK and US been leaving the Church since Vatican II?”

    We need as a Church to confront this modern-day myth; ”no one has to die for the faith, in the West today” As this is untrue, as there is a constant silent persecution taking place within the Church, many Christians have suffered, in tortured silence, unto death and continue to do so, while so many others have been ensnared, as our emptying Churches can testify.

    Ephesians 6:12. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this world’s darkness, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms…

    In the West we talk about our democracy, but the reality is that many “Leaders” in all walks of life serve themselves, as they have their own hidden agendas and appease their own worldly Circle of Influence ..V..; these Circles survive through fear and self-interest. To step outside of the group, (Body of Frankenstein with its many foul parts; see my post via the link) takes courage and integrity, as you run the risk of becoming a victim.

    Link
    https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2019/07/16/the-monosexual-utopia-is-at-hand-a-fembeing-reflects-on-a-revolution/#comment-144807

    “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these “Yes, Lord,” Peter replied, “you know I love you.” “Then feed my lambs,”

    We need a more spiritual/humble Church dedicated to the serving of the Truth, if a new dawn is to break within the Church. The essence of Love is Truth, and those who serve the Truth on the spiritual plain feed the hungry “Man hall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God”… Clothes (Protects) the naked… “How often I have wanted to gather your children together as a hen protects her chicks beneath her wings, but you wouldn’t let me” Visit those hearts ensnared (Imprisoned) by evil, in setting the captive free.

    The serving of the Truth overlaps onto the worldly plain, as it protects the weak and vulnerable form exploitation in opposing oppression, misery and inhumanity, to serve the Truth is to love ones neighbor as oneself, it cannot be faked as it always involves carrying ones Cross. A Church for the poor is not enough (although good in itself) as it side steps the full spectrum of Truth, which confronts Evil on both the Spiritual Plain and Worldly Plain.

    Where can mankind look to see integrity at play, the Truth been served?
    If it cannot be seen in Rome/Peter (Pope Francis), where?
    If the leaders of our Church cannot do this what HOPE is there for mankind?

    It is said you cannot be what you do not see/envisage, so we need to see our Shepherds holding the bright lamp of Truth high above their own vulnerabilities, teachings us by example, in humility, how we are also to be made ‘Holy’ (Sanctified) as in

    “Sanctify them in the Truth; thy Word is Truth as thou didst send me into the world so I have sent them into the world and for their sake I consecrate myself that they also may be consecrated in truth”

    So in our present shameful situation, is God preparing the birth (Building up) of a Church that will be truthful with herself. A Church that proceeds and leads in humility, ‘openly’ acknowledging her failings before God and all of her children.
    As a humble heart (Church) will never cover its tracks or hide its short comings, and in doing so confers authenticity, as it walks in its own vulnerability /weakness/brokenness in trust/faith before God and mankind. It is a heart (Church) to be trusted, as it ‘dispels’ darkness within its own ego/self, in serving God (Truth) first, before any other.

    “God will not despise a broken spirit and contrite heart” and neither will the faithful. The leadership has nothing to fear, no matter how compromised, as the cleansing grace of humility (Full ‘open’ acknowledgement of past failings/sins) is the communal bond of love that holds His flock together.

    The True Divine Mercy Image/message, one of Broken Man given by Our Lord Himself, is a missionary call that offers the Church the means to embrace all her children no matter what their state of being, who are ‘willing’ to ‘openly’ embrace the Wedding (Bonding) garment of humility. The one and only state from where the ongoing transforming action of The Holy Spirit can take place.

    While we evangelize through the action of Humility, a disarming action in its honesty, that embrace all in its simplicity, as we encounter our brothers and sisters who stand and seek direction at the Crossroads (Difficulties) of life.

    Please consider continuing (Wedding/Bonding Garment) via the link.

    http://www.catholicethos.net/catholic-teaching-assault-amoris-laetitia/#comment-226

    kevin your brother
    In Christ

  3. The expression “anonymous sacramental gas station” describes me well, a seminary drop-out in 1967. Now I wonder if reading this book will really do any good. This interview has strengthened my own selfish faith.

  4. Sounds like “must” reading. It appears to be something I’ve been waiting for. I am surprised that education and catechesis did not have more of a point in the interview. That CWR has brought this work to our attention is very much appreciated.

  5. Fantastic article!The Exodus has accelerated over the last 25 years Especially after incidents such as the President of Notre Dame College removing or covering up icons,statues,& art just so Obama would come and pontificate his Lucifer inspired beliefs in May of 2009.If I’ve heard it once I’ve heard it a thousand times.The Nun’s and their rulers!Add to that the “Big Box” Churches and the secular daily assaults by MSM/NET’s upon one of the last ramparts of Faith,Liberty,and the Right to Life and the receipt for the crushing of the Holy Spirits work in humans is at the point of printing out.After we sign our name to the bill.Lucifer then smiles and say’s:”Do you need a copy”.

  6. Why have they left? One major reason is that when they were still attending Mass they rarely if ever heard why they should be Catholics. A false ecumenism reigned. At the Last Supper, Jesus promised three times to send the Holy Spirit to lead the Apostles and their successors into the fullness of the truth. On trial for his life the next day, Jesus testified that he had come to bear witness to the truth and that those who are of the truth will listen to his voice. With what frequency did Mass-attending Catholics hear this message?

    The de facto acceptance of the Sexual Revolution by all too many Catholic clergy and educators also had a tremendously negative effect. Sooner or later the practice of sacrilegious Communion by contracepting Catholics has its effects; leaving is one way of self-justification.

  7. It seems to me that books like this miss the entire point of who is a Catholic and who is not. Very similar to voting polls that say the Catholic vote went this way or that. Whether or not someone “identifies” themselves as Catholic means nothing. The question should do you attend Mass each week or do you not? Those that do are Catholics those that do not, are not. Period. I think the findings of such studies would be different if that was the first question asked and the analysis were based on that answer, not on some ‘well, I was raised Catholic” response. In short, do you practice Catholicism or do you not.

  8. It has always been countercultural and dangerous to be intentionally Catholic. So, when times get tough, and you peel off “Catholics” who go with the flow, or do what their Irish/Italian/Polish/etc. cousins are doing, or are trying to virtue signal the governing authorities, then what remains are intentional Catholics. With all that’s going on today you have to be an intentional Catholic to stick with it. Before long, maybe willing to risk everything.

  9. A far simpler explanation is that the Church concentrated on baptising pagans into the Church so they could be called Catholic, while neglecting entire the teaching of how to truly experience, know, and love God in the silence of the heart.

    From which unspiritual people came the next crop of bishops/priest, and the next and the next…

    Until came the inevitable implosion as people realized that those at Holy Mass were no different than anyone else who never attended…all equally lost and no answers when sought.

    In short, it became empty ritual/hypocracy not worth the bother, and time to seek elsewhere, or surrender to the worldly blandishments same as everyone else.

  10. One wonders if the book overcomes the evidence, which runs counter to the claim made in this piece: every objective indicator showed that before VII things were going well. You would then have to show that people were only going through the motions, which might be well-nigh impossible to do prove. Yes, certain trends were already well underway amongst the “elite” of the Church- theologians, prelates; but whether the average joe was all set to jettison their Faith and was only waiting for the floodgates to open is again highly specious. It is almost bizarre how there is such a tendency to want to deny that VII might in any way or degree be responsible for the collapse. Even given the scenario by the author, there is still the problem of why already existing trends were then highly excelerated after VII. Was that just a coincidence that the floodgates opened at that particular time? Was it all due just to the “misrepresentation” of the council by some?

    • Absolutely correct – Vatican II emasculated practising Catholicism. We were left with a shell, something that approximated and imitated, Protestantism, in an attempt to appease the impossible fiction of ‘ecumenism’. Not only was the liturgy gutted, resulting in the abuses with which we are familiar (every parish has degrees of them), but the liturgical calendar was destroyed, the means of the laity living the faith and taking it into the home. Traditional Catholic practices such as the Rosary, always denigrated by protestants, were denigrated by Catholics, and priests, no less. The cultural revolution that occurred did not help, enabling Catholics to believe that the only people who ever administered discipline were the horrible nuns – an image which equates to hypocrisy when compared with the Jesus that was peddled at the time , a benign hippy from the Church of Nice. Jesus did not tolerate sinners – He threw them out of the Temple. These people desecrated the faith. They attempted, like Protestantism, to invent a palatable version of Christianity that accommodated materialism, social status and worldly comfort. Those who are attracted to a materialist religion need material, worldly rewards (property given from sequestered monasteries, or church pews designated for the family etc., or, perhaps, promotion in society or their profession). Those who are faithful Catholics do not belong to the Church because it accommodates the world – we look for a lot more than that.

      • Absolutely wrong. It is silly in the extreme to pretend that everyone ran screaming from the Novus Ordo in horror. I was there when the change was made. Nobody complained, nobody thought anything of the change in the mass. Nobody thought Vatican II had significantly affected the way the church operated.

        What DID happen are all the things the author of this article talks about. We no longer lived in Catholic enclaves where everyone had the same religion and same beliefs. TV came along right about then in great force, and everyone started getting their thoughts from TV. Contraception came along, and everyone thought that they could limit their family, Humanae Vitae be damned. The media sought out dissenting theologians and only highlighted their ideas, because the would make TV viewing interesting. Rebellion will always get people to watch. We became more educated, and the kids going to college were taught odd things by mainly liberal professors, who eliminated half the story. So the “educated” person came to believe things that would have horrified their parents. People started living together out of wedlock. Why? Because TV and college told them they must try one another out first before deciding.

        The nonsense that the change in the mass was a major factor is a fantasy. The idea that it is all because of Vatican II is a fantasy. You want to ignore everything else that was obviously affecting people.

        Add in that homosexuals began to take over seminaries, and they drove away good men, and you have the perfect storm of collapse. But instead of analyzing these problems in a careful and helpful way, some just want to blame Vatican II. Vatican II is a problem only in that some unscrupulous people used that as an excuse to change everything and make the church a hippy commune.

        • samton909, I was there too–I’m 68–and I agree with you that the belief that change in the mass was a major factor is a fantasy. The biggest factor probably was the increasing mobility of most people, who moved out of their Catholic communities when they grew up. It became obvious to them that non-Catholics were not much different from them, and it was easier to assimilate than to make the effort to maintain a separate identity. Now, you can argue forever about whether they were “true” Catholics to begin with. For perspective I refer you to Sturgeon’s law “Ninety percent of everything is crap.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law I believe that ninety percent of the members of any movement, from religious to political to cult film followers, are just going along with the people in their immediate vicinity. They don’t have much information about the movement, they haven’t deeply examined their own thoughts and feelings about it, and they haven’t made comparisons with other, similar movements. They’re skittering along the surface like so many dragonflies and don’t even notice if the depths beneath them change.

          • I think this is right on. We are a people, not a collection of individual believers, and a large part of the Church was always nominal. That’s part f what the Church is for, to bring us to heaven together, the less firm with the more firm. Now we throw the less firm out, or accept that the take themselves out (which, in our culture, they can do7. The aggressive secular nature of our current culture is often not recognized. It sucks belief out of people.

  11. The decline in church attendance and vocations starts right 1965, no 10 years before, no 10 years later, right in 1965. When the Church took God out of the center of the Sanctuary and in His place they brought a man, sitting in his throne like a king. The priest has given his back to God and his face to the world. The solutin to that is pretty simple.

  12. Q. Why have Catholics in the UK and US been leaving the Church since Vatican II?
    A. Because Vatican II failed to change the trend that had been ongoing for at least 15 years before Vatican II>
    __________
    Question Authority. (Ask me anything!)

  13. My humble opinion is the high divorce rate among practicing Catholic families has left it’s mark on the children to carry the torch on attending Church. Not to say all, but let’s be honest, it doesn’t help. I can remember saying the rosary with my mom, dad and siblings during lent and being taught by my parents to be respectful of my elders and would pay dearly if not. It just seems our basic values and thinking about worldly matters are of a higher concern then going back to the basics of being a Catholic by daily prayer and attending church and receiving the sacraments.

  14. people just do not go to church. do not want to. i work as a sacristan in germany. any argument with me is stupid because i am paid to be there. i have learned people do not want to go to church. also what i have learned is if i convince kids to become altar kids, does not bring the parents in the church. people just do not want to go to church. what i have learned what works is when parents and kids start joining with each other, something happens. they start to grow a larger family in the church. people start going to church. this is slow work and hard work. child to child to parents to parents to family to family. i started with 2 kids and now have 40, but kids have come and gone. the first kids to leave and the kids who parents do not go to church.

    factors that i cannot control. priests. a loving and caring priest. a priest who can preach the gospel and give meaning to who jesus is. priests who can give meaning to how to live out one’s christian life or even catholic. whatever that means.

    the hardest factor is the existing body. are they friendly? do the really care about other people?

    i definitely cannot control the spirit.

    The simpliest answer to the problem is the spirit is leaving the church. the spirit has to do something else. The temple has to fall to release the spirit. now, where is the temple? or better who is the temple? there is more persecution of christians in the world than any other time in history.

    Here is the dumb question? why is the “church” people coming to know christ greatest where persecution is the heaviest? who is often doing the presentation of the gospel. definitely, it is not the christians. Jesus is entering people’s dreams in these countries. Often the case is, these individuals have no connection to christianity period.

    here is a moslem who wakes up one day believing in christ and no real connection to the bible or any christian or church or any knowledge of christ. This person is in the middle of a dominate moslem culture. oops.

  15. people just do not go to church. do not want to. i work as a sacristan in germany. any argument with me is stupid because i am paid to be there. i have learned people do not want to go to church. also what i have learned is if i convince kids to become altar kids, does not bring the parents in the church. people just do not want to go to church. what i have learned what works is when parents and kids start joining with each other, something happens. they start to grow a larger family in the church. people start going to church. this is slow work and hard work. child to child to parents to parents to family to family. i started with 2 kids and now have 40, but kids have come and gone. the first kids to leave and the kids who parents do not go to church.

    factors that i cannot control. priests. a loving and caring priest. a priest who can preach the gospel and give meaning to who jesus is. priests who can give meaning to how to live out one’s christian life or even catholic. whatever that means.

    the hardest factor is the existing body. are they friendly? do the really care about other people?

    i definitely cannot control the spirit.

    The simpliest answer to the problem is the spirit is leaving the church. the spirit has to do something else. The temple has to fall to release the spirit. now, where is the temple? or better who is the temple? there is more persecution of christians in the world than any other time in history.

    Here is the dumb question? why is the “church” people coming to know christ greatest where persecution is the heaviest? who is often doing the presentation of the gospel. definitely, it is not the christians. Jesus is entering people’s dreams in these countries. Often the case is, these individuals have no connection to christianity period.

    here is a moslem who wakes up one day believing in christ and no real connection to the bible or any christian or church or any knowledge of christ. This person is in the middle of a dominate moslem culture. oops.

    maybe a study why people leave the catholic or lutheran church in germany may be a more viable study. people really do leave the church in germany and actually can officially leave the church by deregistering and stop paying church taxes.

    one really cannot leave the church in usa. i mean if you show up tomorrow and decide to take communion, who will stop you. a catholic priest who knows you are not a catholic or no longer with the church on occasions will not give you communion. period. some priests look beyond the “sacramental” requirements. I know priests who will refuse and I know priest who give.

    the people who i know who have left the church in both lutheran or catholic feel taking out all the weak reason feel this way . . . what is the point? it is a waste of time and pay taxes for wasting time. I am in my 60’s.

    Also people more the younger people do not take into account how extreme the jesus movement was a major reason why churches changed. jesus movement has long left dried up roots. again . . . the spirit has to leave the temple.

    • Leaving aside everything else you said, I’m going to address this: “ people really do leave the church in germany and actually can officially leave the church by deregistering and stop paying church taxes.”

      The system in Germany of a church tax administered by the government is disgraceful.

      • I was just reading this CNS article & it seemed to relate to the comments here:

        Catholic News Agency

        BAMENDA, Cameroon — Pope Francis has promoted an African bishop known for his emphasis on family, community, and traditional values. In an announcement released on Monday, the Holy See Press Office confirmed that the pope has named Bishop Andrew Nkea Fuanya as the new Archbishop of Bamenda in Cameroon.
        In contrast to the situation in many European countries, Fuanya said during the synod, the Church in Cameroon and in many parts of Africa is growing – including among young peoples.

        “My churches are all bursting, and I don’t have space to keep the young people,” Fuanya during a Vatican press conference in October last year. “And my shortest Mass would be about two and a half hours.”

        A 2018 study by Pew Research found that church attendance and prayer frequency was highest in sub-Saharan Africa and lowest in Western Europe. Four out of five Christians in Cameroon said that they pray every day.”

  16. So long as the enemies of Post-conciliar church are issues of social justice, and man’s quest for happiness in THIS life, it’s pews will remain dusty. A well-paying job and a dream home in the country, once afforded, give modern man every reason to stop believing. The focus of the church should be on the distal goods of Heaven, the deferred goods of eternal joy. Man’s focus here has to be on loving, serving and adoring God. That message has been obfuscated by immanent values and principles, like borderless countries, inclusion, equity and diversity. We’re suffering for want of the REAL ENEMIES of the church and man’s salvation; i.e. the devil, heresy, apostate “catholics”, communism/socialism. We need to garner our strength and talk Truth to power or we’ll just continue to hemorrhage adherents.

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