By Mike Glenn According to all of our research and surveys, by any measurement, church attendance is down. Some denominations are down more than others, but every brand of Christianity is losing members. The experts have offered a number of reasons for the decline. The pandemic wreaked havoc on families and communities. People got used to staying at home on Sunday morning and they’ve developed new habits. Getting back into old habits, much less starting anything new, is difficult at best. Even the most faithful of us have realized that we really don’t need to go to church every Sunday. Attending a couple of times a month will do us just fine. Every now and then, it does a body good just to sleep in on a Sunday morning. If it’s raining or cold, we’ll just stay home and watch the online service.
Mike- As with your piece last week, another good one. This time, however, I think the issue of "why" is still unclear. I think you piece last week about the pastor loving the church is key, since people in the pews can sense that. But if some faitherful people feel they are not really missing anything and/or can find more spiritual engagement in other ways, then HOW church is done, and WHAT is being communicated may need to be reconsidered. If people think and feel that attending church is nothing special and/or unique (beyond the boredom issue) from what they experience in the rest of their lives, then maybe they are not seeing it as a home and family they want to take up time to be apart of. I am not saying I have the answer, but perhaps a full re-evaluation needs to take place. Again, please keep up the good work.
Churches I have been in blame the survivors of their abuse for not coming anymore, calling them backsliders, not true Christians, etc. The truth is, abusers are welcome at churches and survivors get further abused. I used to be at church all the time and on staff. This is why I no longer go to church. It due to spiritual abuse.
Of course, the response is so very Protestant. The Catholic would say that people who do not go have broken with the teaching of the Church: the homily may be poor and the priest may mumble the mass, but Jesus is really there so one is ignoring a chance to be in the presence of Jesus (and a significant number of Catholic do not believe Jesus is there which is the reason for the 3-year Eucharistic revival). The secondary issue is that they are ignoring the Church's teaching (and authority to teach) on what Heb 10 means when it says "forsake not . . ." The Church has practiced and taught for 2000 years that it means "each week if one is not sick or otherwise prevented from coming" (in which case the Church will bring the sacrament to you if at all possible. My wife pre-arranged for that before he knee replacement this past week, for she is not here. One reason for the above is weak catechesis, which was unfortunately the case for the 70's through the 90's, what Bp Robert Barron calls "dumbed down Catholicism". In the Uniate Catholic communities and the Orthodox world it is often due to a reliance of ethnic identity rather than proper catechesis. Finally, there is the fact that people have bought into Western and especially American individualism and, with roots in the whole stream of Western philosophy from Nietzsche on, to the idea that I determine what is right or what feels good to me determines what is right. There is no place for collective identity as in "the Body of Christ" or in the idea that there is a structure in the universe and even in the wider world of being from which the universe comes that is a given, that God is the embodiment of the good, the true, and the beautiful, so his being determines what they are, that the purpose of humanity individually and collectively is transcendent, i.e. latreia, in context the worship and service of God, even union with the divine nature. The point is that I "go to church" i.e. the local gathering of the Body of Christ to worship, to to listen to a great worship band or hear a good sermon (with the big "I" judging if it is good or not). That is catechesis starting at the philosophical level (often, of course, not expressed in detail). I just with the angels and saints and am part of the worship of the universe, unworthy as I am. I realize that I may be tired, may have gotten habituated to not being there (a bad habit in classical language is a vice and these need confessing and working with a spiritual director or confessor to develop the corresponding virtue), but slough offf my sloth or other vice and gather, for my pleasure gives no meaning to life but participating in the presence of the incarnate God and my fellow believers in the worship of the ages and deep reality is to be part of ultimate reality. But if that is not taught, it is not caught. God may give a "consolation" in which one experiences that anyway, but one is much more likely to grasp it if one is carefully taught. Thank God there are many tools out there for that now from weekend retreats to Bible-in-a Year and Catechism-in-a-Year podcasts to homilies and the structure of the liturgy itself, to mention a few, but we have a lot of catching up to do.
Mike- As with your piece last week, another good one. This time, however, I think the issue of "why" is still unclear. I think you piece last week about the pastor loving the church is key, since people in the pews can sense that. But if some faitherful people feel they are not really missing anything and/or can find more spiritual engagement in other ways, then HOW church is done, and WHAT is being communicated may need to be reconsidered. If people think and feel that attending church is nothing special and/or unique (beyond the boredom issue) from what they experience in the rest of their lives, then maybe they are not seeing it as a home and family they want to take up time to be apart of. I am not saying I have the answer, but perhaps a full re-evaluation needs to take place. Again, please keep up the good work.
Churches I have been in blame the survivors of their abuse for not coming anymore, calling them backsliders, not true Christians, etc. The truth is, abusers are welcome at churches and survivors get further abused. I used to be at church all the time and on staff. This is why I no longer go to church. It due to spiritual abuse.
Of course, the response is so very Protestant. The Catholic would say that people who do not go have broken with the teaching of the Church: the homily may be poor and the priest may mumble the mass, but Jesus is really there so one is ignoring a chance to be in the presence of Jesus (and a significant number of Catholic do not believe Jesus is there which is the reason for the 3-year Eucharistic revival). The secondary issue is that they are ignoring the Church's teaching (and authority to teach) on what Heb 10 means when it says "forsake not . . ." The Church has practiced and taught for 2000 years that it means "each week if one is not sick or otherwise prevented from coming" (in which case the Church will bring the sacrament to you if at all possible. My wife pre-arranged for that before he knee replacement this past week, for she is not here. One reason for the above is weak catechesis, which was unfortunately the case for the 70's through the 90's, what Bp Robert Barron calls "dumbed down Catholicism". In the Uniate Catholic communities and the Orthodox world it is often due to a reliance of ethnic identity rather than proper catechesis. Finally, there is the fact that people have bought into Western and especially American individualism and, with roots in the whole stream of Western philosophy from Nietzsche on, to the idea that I determine what is right or what feels good to me determines what is right. There is no place for collective identity as in "the Body of Christ" or in the idea that there is a structure in the universe and even in the wider world of being from which the universe comes that is a given, that God is the embodiment of the good, the true, and the beautiful, so his being determines what they are, that the purpose of humanity individually and collectively is transcendent, i.e. latreia, in context the worship and service of God, even union with the divine nature. The point is that I "go to church" i.e. the local gathering of the Body of Christ to worship, to to listen to a great worship band or hear a good sermon (with the big "I" judging if it is good or not). That is catechesis starting at the philosophical level (often, of course, not expressed in detail). I just with the angels and saints and am part of the worship of the universe, unworthy as I am. I realize that I may be tired, may have gotten habituated to not being there (a bad habit in classical language is a vice and these need confessing and working with a spiritual director or confessor to develop the corresponding virtue), but slough offf my sloth or other vice and gather, for my pleasure gives no meaning to life but participating in the presence of the incarnate God and my fellow believers in the worship of the ages and deep reality is to be part of ultimate reality. But if that is not taught, it is not caught. God may give a "consolation" in which one experiences that anyway, but one is much more likely to grasp it if one is carefully taught. Thank God there are many tools out there for that now from weekend retreats to Bible-in-a Year and Catechism-in-a-Year podcasts to homilies and the structure of the liturgy itself, to mention a few, but we have a lot of catching up to do.