The Nones: Where they Come from, Who they are, and Where they’re going.

27% of 18-29 identify themselves as being religiously unaffiliated. 18.8% of 30 year old do the same.  Why the emergence?   According to Ryan P. Burge, who published a book (of the lead intro.), “The reality is simply this: Americans used to be Christians by default, not because of their belief in the words of the Apostles’ Creed.  Secularization merely gave permission for a lot of people to express who they truly are—religiously unaffiliated.”

The Catholic Church in America reflects this trend.   When you look around the assembly at Holy Mass, one does not see too many adolescents and young adults.  Statistics bear this out: only  13% of young Catholic adults attend Mass at least once a week before Covid-19 pandemic.   Think about it: 87% of Catholic youth do not regularly participate in Holy Mass, which is the “fount and summit” of our worship.  How does that bode for our future?  Along this line, only  6% say they are involved with parish life over and beyond Mass.  The crisis of Catholic clergy sexually abusing minors was the most frequently given reason for not being more active in parish life.

Nearly ¾ of young U.S. Catholics say they can be a good Catholic w/o going to Mass every Sunday, according to a new CARA survey.  At the Catholic high school where I teach, at our monthly school liturgy, most students will receive Communion, even though, according to the stats. 87% had not been to Mass that Sunday.  They just don’t see Mass as a holy day of obligation.  They’re not alone: most of the adult community doesn’t see Mass attendance as being obligatory either.

It’s not all doom and gloom!  24% of Catholic young adults said they pray individually at least once a day and another 21% said they do so at least once a week (outside of Mass).  Okay, that’s kind of encouraging,  I suppose, but that means that 76% of young adults don’t pray at all during the day, which makes one wonder what kind of relationship they can have with God if they don’t communicate?

More bad news:  Catholic School Enrollments down 6.4%.  That result is brought to you by the National Catholic Education Association annual report.  More than 200 schools have closed and enrollment declined by more than 111,000 students, which reflects the impact that the pandemic had on Catholic education. 

      Total Catholic student enrollment last school year was 1,626,291: 1.3 M in elementary/middle school and 522K in secondary schools.

       School diversity: 21% were racial minorities, of which 18% identified as Hispanic/Latino.

      Non-Catholic enrollment was nearly 20% of total enrollment.

      Regarding Schools, there were 5,981 Catholic schools: 4,812 elementary and 1,169 secondary schools.  Interestingly, 2,374 have a waiting list.

      Co-educational schools made up 98.7 of elementary schools and 70% of secondary schools.  At the secondary level, 13% were male only and 16% are female only.

       Professional staff:  full-time staff numbered 142,977.  Of these 97% were laity (75% women, 22% male, and 3% religious/clergy.

Interesting Catholic stats:

Comparing the year 1965 (Vatican II) and 2020, we have the following:

Total priests: 58,632 (’65)/35,513 (’20);

Priestly ordinations: 994/495;

Permanent deacons: 0/18,026

Religious brothers: 12,271/3,801

Religious sisters: 179,954/41,357

Total parishes:

17,637/16,703

w/o a resident priest: 549/3,544

Catholic population

45.6 M/67.7 M

% of U.S. population: 24%/21%

*Taken from the CARA Report (Summer and Fall, 2021).