Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jun 17, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).
Nearly 50% of adults in the U.S. have some connection to the Catholic faith, according to new data from Pew Research.
“Catholicism’s roots in the United States run deep,” Pew stated in a new report titled “U.S. Catholicism: Connections to the Religion, Beliefs and Practices.”
Pew reported that 47% of U.S. adults have Catholic ties: 20% identify as Catholic, 9% as “culturally Catholic,” 9% as ex-Catholic, and 9% report a connection through a Catholic parent, spouse, or past Mass attendance.
The survey, conducted Feb. 3–9 among a nationally representative sample of 9,544 U.S. adults, including 1,787 Catholics, “was designed to explore Catholic life in the United States,” the report stated. “It was completed prior to the hospitalization of Pope Francis on Feb. 14 and his death in April, and well before the conclave that elected his successor, Pope Leo XIV.”
In addition to demographics, the survey asked what American Catholics believe is most essential to their identity, listing 14 items and asking them to rate them as “essential,” “important but not essential,” or “not important” to their Catholic identity.
The large majority of respondents, 69%, said “having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ” was essential to being Catholic.
The second item most commonly selected as essential was “devotion to the Virgin Mary” at 50%. “Working to help the poor and needy” came in third at 47%, and 46% selected “receiving the Eucharist.”
Getting married in the Church, opposing abortion, caring for migrants, papal primacy, going on pilgrimages, and celebrating feast days were also among 14 items concerning belief and identity that Pew asked respondents to rank.
The survey found that overall, about 3 in 10 Catholic participants surveyed attend Mass weekly. Compared with those who do not attend Mass regularly, those who do were more likely to affirm that all 14 items in the survey were essential to their practice of the Catholic faith.
According to Pew, only “some” of the 20% who identified as Catholic are “deeply observant,” with about 13% saying they pray daily, attend Mass at least weekly, and go to confession at least once per year. Alternately, 13% said they “seldom or never” pray, attend Mass, or go to confession.
“The largest share of Catholics (74%) fall somewhere in the middle of this spectrum of observance. They may pray. They may attend Mass. They may go to confession. But they don’t regularly do all three,” Pew noted.
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The misused and overused expression “personal relationship with Jesus Christ” needs to be defined. Nobody who says that ever defines what they mean by it, and hardly anyone questions or challenges what it means when they hear someone say it.
My relationship with Jesus Christ is *mediated* through Scripture, the sacraments, and other instruments of the Church. I would not characterize my relationship with Jesus as personal in the sense of immediate and direct. I do not receive direct, audible, visible communications from Christ, as I do from a human person with whom I have a genuinely personal relationship. If my relationship with Jesus is personal, it’s because both he and I are persons, but it’s not because there is anything resembling direct, unmediated presence or communication between us.
I frequently suspect that people who claim to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ are just saying that because they think they have to, since it’s become trendy, or they are trying to appear holier than they are. Catholics never used to talk like that. We got the “personal relationship” shtick from Protestant Evangelicals. I would not consider a personal relationship with Jesus Christ to be an essential or defining characteristic of Catholic faith. It didn’t even used to be talked about among Catholics until twenty years ago or so.
I don’t even think such a personal relationship with Christ is possible. It is always mediated, and thus indirect and impersonal to some extent.