BERLIN — The dwindling number of marriages at his parish was the subject of a recent homily by the Rev. Jim Dabrowski of St. Simon Stock Catholic Church.

The Berlin pastor — who never fails to cheer on Eagles fans after Sunday Mass — had sobering news when it came to Catholic unions in his 1,871-family parish.

"We had a pre-Cana meeting last week and only 10 couples showed up," said Dabrowski, referring to the church's premarriage counseling sessions. "We have eight scheduled weddings next year; this year there were 13.

"That's just way off," Dabrowski told the Courier-Post, noting that baptism numbers in the parish have remained stable. "It raises the question of why?"

A 2011 study by the Catholic publisher Our Sunday Visitor shows St. Simon Stock is not alone.

Marriages celebrated in the nation's parishes fell from 415,487 in 1972 to 168,400 in 2010, a decrease of more than 50 percent.

At the same time, the Catholic population increased by about 17 million.

Our Sunday Visitor calculated a change in the "crude" marriage rate from 8.6 marriages per 1,000 Catholics to 2.6 marriages per in 2010. That compares with 6.8 marriages per 1,000 people overall in the U.S.

The Diocese of Camden did not provide hard numbers on marriages at its parishes. Mary Lou Hughes, co-director of its Faith and Family Life Formation, said her experience has been that fewer people are marrying in the church. But there's no one reason.

"There are different answers," she explained. "It depends on whom you're talking to. You can't point a finger to any one thing."

But at least one person cited popular destination weddings as a sign of what he calls "our disconnected, secular, consumerist culture."

In rather strong language from a Sept. 21 supplement in the Catholic Star Herald newspaper, Father Peter J. Daly of the Catholic News Service suggested marrying at an island hotel or far-off resort was not the proper venue for one of the church's most sacred rituals.

"Unless you belong to the church of Hilton or Hyatt, destination weddings are not a religious event," Daly wrote. "There is nothing sacred in the symbolism or the atmosphere of a hotel."

(Canon law states marriage between two Catholics, or between a Catholic and a baptized non-Catholic, must be celebrated in a parish church, unless permission is granted for a different Catholic church or chapel.)

While Hughes hears often of couples choosing destination weddings, she views the latter in the larger context of the country's more secular culture.

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life — a project of the Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C. — released a study this month culled from the U.S. Census that shows numbers of Americans who don't identify with any religion on the rise. One-fifth of the nation — and a third of adults under 30— are described as religiously unaffiliated, the highest percentages ever in its polling, according to Pew. Those numbers include agnostics and atheists.

Two-thirds of Americans, including 63 percent of the religiously unaffiliated in the Pew survey, say religion as a whole is losing its influence on American life.

In the Catholic Church, members who attend Mass only on major religious holidays such as Christmas and Easter are known anecdotally as the Cs and Es.

To them, add the Nones (no pun intended): Americans who no longer identify with or attend church at all. As the Pew study showed, many of them are in the age group most likely to marry for the first time.

"Today's young adults have very varied life realities," Hughes explained. "We have people who come to us with kids . who have two jobs and are going to school.

"There are all kinds of things that have to do with that."

To that end, Hughes said the diocese has taken a hard look at its pre-Cana programs. Couples can opt for a traditional weekend away, small sessions at their parish or private mentoring from other couples.

"Many times, couples have fallen away from the practice of the faith," offered Fr. William Moore, pastor at Mary, Queen of All Saints Parish in Pennsauken.

"When they come in, we ask, 'Why do you want to be married in the church?' We want to know how we can help them."

Sometimes the decision to marry in the church is simply generational, Hughes said.

"A lot of people choose to marry in the Catholic Church because it's important to someone in their life. These might be youth or young adults who aren't necessarily engaged (with the church), but will come to us to strengthen a family relationship."

Nineteen Sixty-four is a research blog for the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, a nonprofit that conducts social scientific studies about the Catholic Church. In a recent post, researcher Adriana Garcia analyzed a 2007 survey on Catholic marriage among 1,008 adults.

Her conclusion: "Millennials (born after 1981) who attend Mass at least once a month, with married parents, and with more traditional views of marriage, are among the most likely to say it is important to them to be married in the Church.

"Attendance at college or attainment of a degree are factors that make it less likely a never-married Catholic will say it is important for them to marry in the Church."

It appears age is a factor as well. According to a study released in April by the Public Research Institute and Georgetown University's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, nearly a quarter of millennials raised in the Catholic faith have left it by the time they are 24. And a majority support abortion rights and same-sex marriages, putting them at odds with the church of their youth.

"Catholics, as well as non-Catholics, are less likely to marry in general and are putting off marriage until later in life," Mark Gray, director of CARA and editor of the 1964 blog, said in an email.

"Among those who do marry, many choose to be married in settings outside the church. The latter is really related to the culture of marriage that has evolved in the United States."