10 million people have switched away from the US Catholic Church
Pastor Dale Morgan
10 million people have switched away from the US Catholic Church*
LEAVING THE FOLD
Nearly 10 million people have switched away from the Catholic faith,
according to the 2001 American Religious Identification Survey. Where
they say they went:
• No religion: 28%
• Christian: 17%
• Other religions: 14%
• Baptist: 11%
• Lutheran: 6%
• Methodist: 5%
• Pentecostal: 5%
• Non-denominational: 3%
• Presbyterian: 3%
• Episcopalian, Anglican: 3%
• Evangelical, born again: 2%
• Mormon: 2%
• Don't know or refused: 1%
Source: Religion in a Free Market by Barry A. Kosmin and Ariela Keysar,
based on their 2001 American Religious Identification Survey
By Cathy Lynn Grossman, USA TODAY
That's what the 2007 Official Catholic Directory, due out this week,
will say. But what about the dead, the double-counted and the
disgruntled ex-Catholics — all of whose names may still plump up parish
rolls?
Yes, there are probably "ghosts" in the lists, says demographer Mary
Gautier, senior researcher for the Center for Applied Research in the
Apostolate, in Washington, D.C. The center analyzes data for the U.S.
Conference of Catholic Bishops.
CARA's analysis counts 64.4 million Catholics in 2006, up from 63.9
million in 2005. (The directory's overall totals are higher because they
include Puerto Rico, Guam and American protectorates.)
Totals are up, with minor fluctuations — 1% a year for the past 25
years, Gautier says. "But counting Catholics is more art than science."
Catholics drift from parish to parish without ever formally moving their
membership. Heirs neglect to tell parish secretaries that Mom or Dad has
died.
And those who have stopped going to church or switched denominations
rarely bother to formally quit, she says.
The American Religious Identification Survey in 2001 counted almost 51
million Catholics in the USA, making them the nation's largest
denomination. ARIS found that nearly 9.5 million Americans consider
themselves ex-Catholics.
However, they are counterbalanced by the millions who still consider
themselves Catholic but are not officially counted because they've never
registered or they were baptized in another country, says Gautier. She's
a co-author of American Catholics Today, an analysis published this
spring of Gallup surveys from 1987 to 2005.
Those surveys "get a substantially larger number who say they are
Catholic than the directory counts."
They find Catholics still cling to their religious identity no matter
how far they stray from church.
"Still, that's all extrapolation, and demographers don't love
extrapolations," says Gautier. So the Official Catholic Directory and
CARA statistics stick with parish registration, baptismal rolls and
sometimes the subjective estimate of the diocesan bishops who submit the
numbers. The accuracy depends on whether the lists are "cleaned" with
any regularity. It's an issue worldwide.
The technology magazine Wired recently touted a website for the Italian
Union of Rationalists and Agnostics that claims 30,000 Italians have
downloaded copies of a formal procedure, drawn from a Vatican website,
for removing their names from the institutional church head count.
Although no one knows how many global Catholics have discovered the
forms and mailed exit letters to their priests, "we see a traffic spike
every time the pope says something unpopular," site manager Raffaele
Carcano told Wired.
No, they're not getting unbaptized. It's impossible.
"You may not practice, you may not believe. You may not belong to a
parish. But technically, you're always a Catholic," says Monsignor
Michael Servinsky, a canon law expert and the vicar general for the
Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown, Pa.
"We used to get letters all the time from Jehovah's Witnesses asking to
be taken off the baptismal registry, but we never did it because you
can't be unbaptized. We did make note in the registry and stop counting
them as practicing Catholics," says Servinsky.
A 1983 revision of canon law for the first time permitted born Catholics
and converts to formally leave the church. There tend to be three
reasons why people want to leave, Servinsky says: conversion; a wish to
marry a non-Catholic and still have the marriage recognized; and, in
some European countries, a gambit for lowering income taxes by no longer
having a percentage designated for the church.
But the Vatican found that the 1983 code didn't specify the exit process
and it befuddled bishops, canon lawyers and judicial vicars. So in
March, the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts elucidated a
procedure for the Actus Formalis Defectionis Ab Ecclesia Catholica.
Just as it sounds, it's the formal act of defection from the Catholic
Church. It requires that a competent person make a free, conscious
personal decision to "rupture bonds of communion — faith, sacraments,
and pastoral governance." Then he or she must write a letter saying this
to the church and must mail it (no e-mail) to the parish where they were
baptized so it can be duly noted in rolls.
Americans, however, have found an easier route, says Servinsky.
"They just stop returning the little donation envelopes from that last
place they were registered, and, eventually, they get taken off the
parish rolls."