Here’s bad news, but news we simply must face up to in our ministries and service to the Gospel: “The situation with US Catholic youth actually is grim,” says Christian Smith at the National Catholic Reporter.

Smith states well the reasons for his analysis, with methodological explanation for why his analysis differs from more optimistic folks such as William D’Antonio, James Davidson, Mary Gautier, and Katherine Meyer. I’ve long wondered why some of the folks at CARA so consistently downplay the demographic problems and seem to spin things to say what one would rather hear. To be honest, it’s sometimes felt like denial and just happy talk.

Here’s Smith:

[W]e find (and will publish in a forthcoming report) that fully one-half of youth who self-identified as Catholic as teenagers no longer identified as Catholics 10 years later in their 20s. That is a 50 percent loss through attrition in one decade. If that number is not grim, I do not know what is.

Smith offers explanation for this conclusion:

The survey studies of D’Antonio, Davidson, Gautier and Meyer are good for comparing differences in attitudes among existing adult American Catholic across generations (at least, the minority that is willing to answer surveys). But they are simply incapable of addressing and answering the question of the church’s more recent (lack of) success in forming and retaining its youth.

I’m afraid that Smith’s bleak portrayal fits entirely with my impressions. My impressions are merely anecdotal, but quite extensive.

Undergrads in our university – and they’re mostly from the Midwest but also from across the country and world – are in a different, less engaged place than even 5 years ago in how they talk about prayer and worship and church involvement. When they turn in essays on their required attendance at 2 Catholic parish Masses, more and more of them write, “This service was at [5pm / 8am / 11 am], and at this time of day it was mostly older people and not many my age there.” When the National Catholic Youth Choir sings at parish Masses on tour across the Midwest, I look out from the sanctuary and see mostly people in their 60s and 70s and 80s, with but a sprinkling of younger folks. A diocesan priest tells me that in his 10 years in a parish, it feels like the whole parish got 10 years older. Parish musicians who attend all the Masses in a large parish report that the parish has 100 confirmations annually and hence about 600 high-schoolers, but only a few dozen of these are seen at all the weekend Masses.

I take into account that it is here in the Midwest and on the East Coast (“out east,” as we say in these parts) that the Catholic Church is shrinking, but the growth is in the South and the West, and among immigrant and ethnic groups that I have less contact with. I also hear of really vibrant parishes with spirited youth involvement. There is that, too.

But I also hear from colleagues in all parts of the US – people in academia, musical and liturgical ministry, publishing, and so forth – things like “Out of all my nieces and nephews, only one is a church-goer,” or “Of my six kids, all products of Catholic education, three are not having their children baptized.”

I get it that the plural of anecdote is not data. But Smith’s work suggests that the data does perhaps coincide with my anecdotal impressions. I’d rather be wrong in this case, but alas, I fear that I’m not.

* * * * *

How to respond?

Our response has to be spiritual, first of all, and it must come from a place of trust in God and lead us to a place of hope.

We must open our hearts to a future very different from what we expected or would have chosen, but a future nonetheless with its own unexpected graces and blessings and opportunities.

We must focus on the Kingdom first and the Church second – which of course is something salutary to do at all times, whatever the demographics. This helps us get beyond mere number-counting and simplistic claims about “what works.” It remains ever important to go back, again and again, to the Gospel parables of Our Lord and to put on the mind of Christ.