NEWS STORY: Study: Younger Catholics staying in church

c. 1998 Religion News Service MONTREAL _ The Catholics are staying. The Catholics are staying. In a major new study of post-baby boom Roman Catholics ages 20 to 39, researchers have found nine in 10 people who were confirmed as adolescents have kept the faith of their youth, and three in four said they could […]

c. 1998 Religion News Service

MONTREAL _ The Catholics are staying. The Catholics are staying.

In a major new study of post-baby boom Roman Catholics ages 20 to 39, researchers have found nine in 10 people who were confirmed as adolescents have kept the faith of their youth, and three in four said they could not imagine belonging to any other church.


The findings, reported Friday (Nov. 6) at the annual joint meeting of the Religious Research Association and the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, stand in stark contrast to a similar study of mainline Protestants finding large numbers abandoning the church as young adults.

The new study also found Catholic identity remains strong despite high rates of intermarriage.

While denominational boundaries may be vanishing among conservative and liberal Protestants, there is little evidence of a Protestant-Catholic melting pot, researchers found.

“I went into this study … with the idea the Catholic scene is going to replay the mainline scene,”’ said Dean Hoge, a Catholic University of America sociologist involved in both studies. “It took me by surprise.”

Hoge and colleagues William Dinges of Catholic University, Mary Johnson of Emmanuel College and Juan Gonzalez Jr. of California State University at Hayward conducted telephone interviews of 427 non-Hispanic Catholics and 421 Latino Catholics in 1997. The respondents were randomly chosen from the confirmation records of 44 rural, urban and suburban parishes from each region of the country in an effort to provide geographic and ethnic balance.

The sample is not representative of all young Catholics since it is estimated only two-thirds of non-Hispanic Catholics _ and a much smaller percentage of Hispanic Catholics _ receive the sacrament of Confirmation.

However, researchers said it is one of the most comprehensive studies ever done following the path of Catholics who were active in the church as youths and yields interesting comparisons with a similar study of mainline Protestants. The study has a margin of error of plus or minus 6 percentage points.

In the 1990 study of Protestants, Hoge, Benton Johnson of the University of Oregon and Donald Luidens of Hope College in Holland, Mich., interviewed 500 people, ages 33 to 42, who were confirmed in Presbyterian churches in the 1950s and 1960s. Only 29 percent remained active Presbyterians. Twenty-three percent joined other churches and 48 percent were classified as “unchurched,” meaning they were either unaffiliated or attended church fewer than six times a year.

The time after high school and young adulthood is often a period of religious experimentation, with many youths choosing to drop out of organized religion altogether.


In the new study of Catholics, Dinges reported, “First, there is no evidence that young adult Catholics today are a generation of irreligious scoffers.”

Despite an intermarriage rate of 50 percent for non-Hispanic Catholics and 24 percent for Latino Catholics, only 10 percent of the respondents reported leaving Catholicism, and of that number only 4 percent reported they are non-religious, the researchers said. Six percent left for other Christian churches.

Three-quarters of non-Hispanic Catholics and 81 percent of Hispanic Catholics said they could not imagine being anything other than Catholic. And more than two-thirds of each group said there is something very special about being Catholic which you can’t find in other religions.

In defining some elements of their faith, about nine in 10 current Catholic respondents said the bread and wine actually becomes the body and blood of Christ during Mass. Nearly nine in 10 said Catholics have a responsibility to end racism and more than three-quarters said they have a duty to close the gap between the rich and the poor.

Johnson said some religion scholars, who predicted as many as 50 percent of young adults would no longer consider themselves Catholic, were “stunned” by the results.

If there is good news now, researchers said, the study also indicated problems lie ahead for the Catholic Church in retaining baby busters and members of Generation X.


For example, eight in 10 current Catholic respondents said the church should encourage discussion and debate by lay Catholics on doctrinal issues such as divorce, remarriage and human sexuality. And three-quarters said the Catholic Church should put more women in positions of leadership and authority.

“Right now, it’s just the young people. Wait 20 years, and the whole laity is going to have that attitude,” Hoge said. “How are you going to keep church authority in place when you have a laity that favors open discussion of these topics?”

And while the spirit is willing to identify itself as Catholic, the flesh is weak for many young Catholics when it comes to activities such as attending Mass on a weekly basis. Seven in 10 respondents said they attend church at least once a month, but only 31 percent reported attending weekly.

Dinges said one reason so many young adults have remained Catholic is they have essentially redefined the faith so much on their own terms there is no point in leaving.

He said there is a need to bring young adults in the church to a sense of what it means to be a Catholic and why a shared Catholic identity is important.

“This is what’s in jeopardy now, a sense of community,” Dinges said. “Catholicism … is not a me-and-Jesus religion.”


DEA END BRIGGS

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