‘Dramatic’ decline in Catholic marriage highlights need for ‘proactive’ Church response

A steep decline in Catholic marriages in the U.S. over the past few decades is underscoring the need for “proactive” marriage support in the Church.

Data obtained by EWTN News from the Official Catholic Directory shows a major drop-off in U.S. Catholic marriage, from about 267,000 in the year 2000 to just 111,718 in 2024, a decline of nearly 60%.

The drop is even starker when compared with midcentury numbers: In 1970 there were about 426,000 Catholic marriages in the United States, compared with about 108,000 in 2025, a roughly 75% drop-off, though the 2025 numbers are still provisional.

Those declines have come even as the total number of Catholics in the U.S. has risen, from about 47.8 million Catholics in 1970 to 68 million last year.

‘Broader societal factors’ contribute to drop-off

Christian Meert, the founder and president of the Colorado-based Agape Catholic Ministries, told EWTN News that society is “not moving in the ‘marriage direction.’”

Agape offers Catholic marriage preparation and enrichment as well as other services such as natural family planning instruction. Marriage prep, Meert argued, should offer “real relational skills, communication, finances, and faith integration” for couples on the verge of matrimony.

But various factors — including “delayed adulthood, high divorce rates, economic pressures, shifting priorities, rising individualism, the evolution of dating culture, [and] cohabitation” — have all helped drive marriage rates down, he said.

The Catholic marriage decline has occurred alongside a steep decline in marriage throughout society, Meert said, though the Catholic drop-off is “disproportionately larger.”

“Yes, society in general is not helping, politicians are not helping, secularization and cultural shifts have eroded social support for all religious institutions,” he pointed out.

But the Church can take “proactive steps” to help reverse the decline, he said, including fostering “community spaces where young adults can meet and form healthy relationships,” focusing on “individual marriage formation” rather than broad, “cheap” programs and engaging parish families to “accompany engaged couples during their marriage preparation and after.”

Church leaders make regular appeals for a healthier and more fruitful marriage culture. Pope Leo XIV in November 2025 urged the Roman Rota to avoid “false mercy” when considering marriage annulments, warning again on Jan. 26 against “pastoral decisions [on annulments] lacking a solid objective foundation.”

In 2024, meanwhile, the U.S. bishops announced the “Love Means More” initiative, one meant to “bring clarity and compassion” to issues surrounding love, marriage, and sexuality.

Still more efforts have come from the lay faithful. In 2025 Emily Wilson-Hussem and her husband, Daniël, launched a new Catholic dating app, “SacredSpark,” which Wilson-Hussem described as a place “where we can connect people who will build up the Church because they’ve entered into a sacramental marriage and will build up the family.”

The Life-Giving Wounds ministry, meanwhile — founded in 2020 by husband and wife Daniel and Bethany Meola — ministers to adult children of divorce, helping them overcome the pain and trauma of their parents’ divorces in order to strengthen their own marriages.

In a June 2025 homily, Pope Leo described marriage as “not an ideal but the measure of true love between a man and a woman,” one that is “total, faithful, and fruitful.”

“In the family, faith is handed on together with life, generation after generation,” the Holy Father said. “It is shared like food at the family table and like the love in our hearts.”

The marriage decline has even formed part of the secular discourse, as experts have warned that steep drop-offs in fertility in most of the developed world can be tied in part to declines in marriage rates and that policymakers who want to encourage more births should also be encouraging more marriages.

Meert, meanwhile, said Catholic families should be offering positive examples for young people to follow in the faith and in marriage.

He disputed the argument that “all the blame [can be put] on the clergy” for failing to transmit Catholic teaching to the faithful over the past few decades.

“What example are parents and grandparents giving to their children? How do they practice their faith? How do they transmit their faith?” he said. “When we see the rise in divorce, families not practicing their faith, not going to church, not active in their parishes — what can we expect?”

“We, the Church, the whole community of faithful, aren’t we all responsible?” he said.