The Church isn't dying, you're just impatient
There is a weird paradox in Catholic content right now.
You have half the people complaining the Church is dying and another half going “We’re back, retvrn, based.”
I’m torn myself, but I think both are necessary to really understand the situation the Church is in. For decades, all we’ve had are negative statistics. But it is time to realize the landscape has changed.
Since I was in high school, the attitude was always “It’s getting worse. The Church is dying. The priests are dying. The kids aren’t Catholic. We gotta do something quick!”
Now things are starting to turn around.
The drift is leveling off. You can see growth all over the country—especially at conservative colleges and areas with young people like DC or Manhattan. Some churches are surging. My own parish has had a crazy amount of converts the last few years.
But then you have the “statistics accounts” talking about how the numbers look bad
So how do we reconcile the two?
The fact is that the Church is going through a pruning.
People (including myself) talk about the “8-to-1” statistic—8 people leave for every one that joins. It is heartbreaking, but its also not necessarily a bad thing. If those eight people had already emotionally checked out and left, their physical leaving is a net positive.
At least they made a decision.
Looking at the other side of that statistic, that convert is not just a number. He is a person. He has relationships and a passion for the faith. If we’re losing eight people who were doing nothing and gaining one person who has a new zeal and wants to help the mission, that’s a win.
We need to avoid the statistical doomerism. If you only focus on the negatives, you’ll get more attention, but you’ll just demoralize your audience into inaction. On the other hand, if you say “We’ve won” and spike the ball, you make people complacent. We have to strike a balance.
The reality is the Church isn’t dying. It can’t die. We’re just impatient.
We want God to fix us now, but pruning a tree takes time.
Things are getting better. There are national movements and organizations like Word on Fire, Ascension Press, Life Teen, Hallow, FOCUS, etc. are effecting real change and causing conversions. These things were niche movements or didn’t even exist 20 or 30 years ago
There are pockets of the Church in America that are booming because they are doing what Catholic parishes are supposed to do: help people find community, meet Jesus in the sacraments, grow in the faith, and share that faith. You can do those things even if your parish hierarchy isn’t willing to.
These pockets look like families getting together and encouraging each other. Finding devout Catholics like them and building.
It will take time, but the work is worth it.
That’s why I wrote my book, Save Your Parish.
It launched at #1 on the Catholicism and Church Growth charts and details how any Catholic can build up their parish community even with no experience or institutional support.
If you want to know how to actually build one of these pockets where you live, go grab a copy.
I left due to a lot of issues going on in my family, who also didn’t model the faith but spoke against it instead.
Took me a long time to come back (52 years!) and a lot of trial and error in trying Protestant churches. Because of the time gone, my pastor recommended that I take OCIA as a refresher, and to learn what I wasn’t taught as a kid.
Reading the catechism has also been helpful.
Our small parish has 22 people besides me in the OCIA class. A couple are also back after leaving as kids but they never received all the sacraments like I did. The rest are converts, several having never been baptized in any church. One couple brought their kids in first, and the kids will be confirmed before the parents as the kids have their ceremony in March and the adults on Easter Vigil.
I’d say that’s pretty good numbers.
No disagreement on the main points. A note of sympathy for the doomerists, though, as the pruning process entails a great deal of pain. For example, parish closures and consolidations of once thriving communities is hard to stomach, however necessary they are.
And those “8” who leave are often children of those who may strove to raise them Catholic but still ended up leaving. I’d hesitate to call their departure a net positive when the personal nature of watching those you love leave the sacraments can be wrenching.