THE CATHOLIC CHURCH LIFE SURVEY
Work in Progress
Summary of Research Seminar Video-conference
15th December, 1998
presented by Michael Mason
Director, CCLS
Outline
1. Predicament of the Church
2. Relevance of research
3. Objectives of the Survey
4. Early highlights
5. Progress
6. Current challenges
7. The role of ACU
Introduction
It is scientific development which most excites and impresses today. Like all
development of abstract understanding, it is a progression in which each new step contains
within it all previous steps; it does not need to retrace its path; it renders the ‘old science’ of
the past irrelevant.
But culture consists of more than pure ideas. Its symbolic and material components
develop differently. Its development is a series, but not a ‘progression’ in the mathematical
sense; it requires an ‘additive recapitulation’ of the past; more like the process in which layers
of sediment are deposited in a river bed.
Religion is a cultural institution, and the Church is a cultural organisation. Hence if it
is to carry its culture forward, it must be inherently, not ‘conservative’ in the political sense,
but “conservationist”, in the sense of needing to gather up its “train” as it moves forward.
Now the university, in its totality, is also a cultural institution, concerned with more
than purely intellectual development. Hence, if we could understand the predicament of
churches in the post-modern world, we would have shed light as well on the predicament of
universities in that same environment.
1. The Predicament of the Church
-sharp decline in proportion of Catholics participating in the life of the Church;
-acute shortage of recruits to the priesthood;
-today’s Catholics are very different from their parents and grandparents–they have
grown up in an increasingly secular society and are influenced strongly by its
worldview and values.
Work in progress; not for quotation, citation or circulation except within Australian Catholic University.
Text © 1998 M. Mason. Data © 1996, 1998 Australian Catholic Bishops Conference. Not for quotation, dissemination
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or publication without authorisation by the Conference. The Catholic Church Life Survey is the intellectual property of the ACBC.
A variety of attempted explanations of this predicament have been put forward;
numerous hypotheses invoke a process of “secularisation”. There is considerable confusion
even about the meaning of this term. Ideological uses imply that it is an inevitable process
leading to the extinction of religion.
For the sake of clarity from the start, let us stipulate that by ‘secularisation’ we mean:
“the process in which sectors of society and culture are removed from the dominion of
religious symbols and institutions” (Peter L. Berger).
Is there any evidence of such a process taking place in Australia? Ample evidence:
social institutions like education, social welfare and health were formerly under religious
auspices, and are now primarily functions of the secular state, and bereft of their former
religious ingredients. More potent still is the cultural dimension of secularisation: the
dominant contemporary worldviews and values are no longer infused with religious symbols.
Is such a process inevitable? Not inherently. In some respects it seems unlikely to be
reversed, but in other dimensions it is obviously open to development in a variety of
directions. There is nothing mysteriously ‘pre-determined’ or ‘inevitable’ about such a
process in itself. But given some of the developments which have taken place, and show no
sign of being reversed, then certain consequences will naturally tend to flow from these
developments–with a kind of (conditional) inevitability. If the stove gets stuck on ‘high’, so
long as you can’t change this, it’s inevitable your kitchen will warm up!
Does secularisation as we have defined it lead to the extinction of religion? While it
undoubtedly tends to diminish religion’s influence, one would be rash indeed to predict the
extinction of an institution as enduring as religion has shown itself to be! It survived most of
its modern aspiring undertakers. Two graffiti:
“‘God is dead!’ – Nietzsche”, under which is written in another hand:
“‘Nietzsche is dead!’ – God.”.
See appendix A for a set of detailed hypotheses on secularisation in Australia as it
impacts on the Catholic church. The first set comprises processes which have taken place and
seem most unlikely to be reversed. The second set comprises responses that the Church has
made to the process. They involve choices of strategy, and where they have failed in their
purpose, they can in principle be reversed, even if in most cases this would be a very difficult
enterprise, and require a fundamental change in the Church, something like a radical ‘reconversion’.
Meanwhile, however, in addition to all the factors mentioned in the Appendix,
Science ‘works’; its explanations, although often totally misunderstood on a popular level are
credible, authoritative; ‘scientism’–faith in ‘science’ as providing a complete worldview,
seems to be an important part of the ‘No religion’ culture, carried by a social category defined
in the Australian Census, growing rapidly while the mainstream religions are declining in
adherents.
3
The baby-boomers and ‘Generations X and Y’ which follow them show great
differences in worldview and values from their predecessors.
1
The increasing salience of mass media is about to be boosted by the advent of HDTV,
permitting very large screens which will have greater dominance in living and working space;
in Australia, though not necessarily elsewhere, it seems most likely that access to this
medium will be largely confined to opinion leaders who make effective use of ridicule (which
is of high cultural potency in this culture) to delegitimate (sap the credibility of) religious
beliefs and values, practices and organisations.
The church as an organisation has been severely damaged by the long series of
scandals involving sexual abuse, exploited for maximum effect by hostile media. CCLS data
show that the effect has been extremely widespread and severe, and by no means confined to
‘marginal’ Catholics.
We understand something of the kind of crisis that occurs in culturally authoritarian
organisations when the ‘lid’ of tight doctrinal control over public speech and writing is
removed suddenly. (Even the dissolution of the Soviet Union provides a recent object lesson
in this regard). Church authorities and theologians may not fully understand the effect on
many laity of their exposure to the process of the Second Vatican Council. Many faithful
would have tended to regard almost all ‘doctrine’ as divine in origin. Seeing doctrinal
propositions subject to an [instantly recognisable] political process, involving opposed
parties, majority defeating minority by vote, etc. created a new understanding for such people;
one might call it a “secularisation of doctrine”. Doctrine is removed to some extent from the
zone of the ‘sacred and untouchable’, and hence is more likely to be subject increasingly to
individual choice. What is often referred to as a ‘consumer mentality’–selectivity in belief,
needs to be understood against the background of this experience. Unavoidably, in a world
where intimate details of its deliberations were widely reported, the Council itself as
popularly understood, without possession of a refined judgment on what the council fathers
believed was open to change, and what they considered sacrosanct, can be seen as a
significant cause of the growing tendency to doctrinal ‘selectivity’.
Organisations in crisis either perish or transform themselves. Part of the process
leading to renewal is to face problems squarely and honestly.
Dysfunctional responses to crisis are also frequently observed: problems are not
confronted; sometimes, in a strange reversal, they are actually rationalised as advantages!
The emphasis is on continuing ‘business as usual’. In the phenomenon known as ‘goal
displacement’, the original goals of the organisation are forgotten, and in effect, the goal
becomes mere survival.
1
Gary Bouma and Michael Mason, ‘Baby-Boomers Downunder’, in Wade Clark Roof,
Jackson W. Carroll and David A. Roozen eds, The Post-War Generation and Establishment Religion:
Cross-Cultural Perspectives, San Francisco: Westview Press, 1995.
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Members of such organisations manifest depression and loss of morale. Leaders are
under a crushing burden and are sometimes the first to crumble. There tends to be a high
‘turnover’ of personnel. The longer the situation continues, the deeper becomes the paralysis
disabling the organisation from dealing with the crisis.
The Australian Church clearly manifests this syndrome to a considerable extent.
Should we then consider it as basically like any other dying institution? There is no guarantee
in Catholic faith that an entire national church may not ‘have its candlestick removed’, in the
words of the Book of Revelation. Catholic Christianity has in the past been extinguished in
particular regions where it had formerly flourished.
On the other hand, Catholics form part of a tradition in which resurrection is not
unheard of, and the Church is animated by a capricious Spirit who, confounding human
wisdom, has a way of breathing life into the dullest embers on the trashpile of history.
Remedies proposed for the predicament of the Church
-the project of Pope John Paul II: sometimes characterised as ‘restoration’;
-the ‘refounding’ paradigm of Arbuckle and others;
-accommodation of the Church to post-modernity (Spong, Runcie);
-H. Richard Niebuhr’s classic set of alternatives for the Church vis--vis the culture is
always illuminating to revisit:
-Christ against culture
-Christ in culture
-Christ above culture
-Christ in paradox with culture
-Christ transforming culture.
-The contemporary relevance of Schleiermacher’s model of Christianity in dialogue
with its ‘cultured despisers’ has long been disvalued, especially by Catholics, who feared that
his was the ultimate subjectivism--a theology based on mere ‘feeling’ understood as emotion.
But long-held misunderstandings are being clarified by contemporary Protestant scholars,
revealing the high relevance of S’s method in today’s situation.
-The perpetual dilemma for a church whose fundamental understandings of creation
and incarnation make it unthinkable to ‘abandon’ the world is when to comfort and when to
challenge? The high cost of a prophetic stance against the culture is not always counted.
Besides, it requires a considerable degree of economic independence. A church highly
dependent on government funding will not even see, let alone voice, issues deserving
evangelical challenge, when such action would threaten its survival. It’s always a question of
‘where does Jeremiah go for a feed’?
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2. Relevance of research to the Church’s predicament.
It’s good to be modest about the role that research can play. I do not imagine that it is
the most crucial of the Church’s needs at this time. A profound renewal will require much
more than research. But it does not seem to much to claim that research is indispensable as
an aid to this process, in two ways:
1) There is a danger of not understanding the predicament, or not even facing it; of
carrying on with “business as usual” and ignoring it. Research can help here. If its findings
are expressed in terms that individuals do not perceive as attacking the church, as negative,
destructive, secular, lacking in faith, individuals can make us of its portrayal of the Church’s
predicament and its causes in order to adapt.
2) Without research, any planning for dealing with immediate or longer-term
situations tends to be what someone has called the “one drunken step after another” approach.
Idealistic, “blue-sky” objectives which are not achievable are proposed, and business goes on
as usual.
Everyone has their own guesses or hunches as to what are the key problems and what
needs most urgently to be done; some of these will be right, and some are quite likely to be
wrong. Research can help tell which is which.
The Church has long been well-guided by the sense that it understands human nature;
this does not change; but new circumstances can make a big difference to what strategies of
ministry are appropriate.
There is a scepticism abroad today that rates all opinions as equal in value; all theories
as equally irrelevant. Research tries to show that some diagnoses can be supported with
evidence, and others shown to be unlikely. (One theory assumed by many is that people stay
away from the Church because they are “alienated” by its institutional aspects; it is
undoubtedly true of some, but we have strong indications that it is by no means the main
cause).
Research can “put numbers on the hunches”. Without it, attempts at adaptive change
can result in an institution “thrashing about in all directions at once”. How else is one to
know whether some proposed remedy is mere fiddling at the edges or “hitting the centre” and
producing movement in the desired direction?
[3. For the description of the Catholic Church Life Survey and its objectives which formed
the next section of the presentation, the reader is referred to the accompanying paper: on the
Origin, Objectives and Research Design of the Survey, which has been deposited in all
campus libraries.]
There are seven distinct topics around which the study was designed:
-Parish vitality
-Spirituality and religious experience
-Priests working in parishes
-Catholic education
-Pastoral associates
-The participation of women in the Church
-The Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA)
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4. A few highlights from early findings: (see charts in Appendix B.)
a) The decline in attendance 1950-1999
(see Appendix B, Chart 1. Sources: surveys and public opinion polls).
Our best estimate of the 1996 figure is 18%. The continuation downwards to this
most recent figure is surprising, even to those aware of trends overseas and the previous trend
in Australia.
b) Weekly attendance by age and sex (see Chart 2. Source: CCLS. This and subsequent
charts are not based, as was Chart 1, on the Catholic population as a whole, but on the
attenders present on the Sunday on which the CCLS was conducted in September, 1996.
Chart 2 shows the age and gender distribution of those who said they attended weekly. The
age groups with the highest attendance rates are those over the age of 50. The numbers of the
eldest will naturally decrease over the next 20 years; because they constitute such a high
proportion of attenders, their loss will have a large impact on the number attending regularly.
As has been noted in surveys before the CCLS, the number and proportion of women
in the younger age groups is not much different from that of men. This is a momentous
change. Until 30 years ago, women were more ‘religious’ than men at all ages on almost
every indicator. At the same time, mothers were more influential than fathers over the choice
of children’s denomination in a mixed marriage, and over their level of practice as children.
Whether this relatively greater influence will continue, we do not yet know.
We will later depict the details of what every participant already knows in a general
way: that the older cohorts of attenders are being replaced by very much smaller cohorts. The
“active” church of tomorrow, on present trends, will be much smaller than that of today, and
will continue to diminish as older members depart.
c) Idea of God (Chart 3. Source: CCLS).
Doctrinal questions in the CCLS revealed the penetration of “liberal”,
“fundamentalist”, “New Age” and secular alternatives to orthodoxy–even among regular
church attenders.2 The pantheist and Deist alternatives received significant support among
some age and occupational groups.
d) Some social and moral issues are depicted in
Chart 4 ( Bishops’ Social Policies--Questionnaire A, q. 26)
Chart 5 (Attitude to Abortion--Questionnaire A, q. 24)
Chart 6 (Premarital Sex--Questionnaire A, q. 25)
Chart 7 (Lay opinion of Priests’ Celibacy--Questionnaire F, q. 39 and Priests’ Attitude to
Celibacy--Questionnaire W, q. 119)
Responses to these questions will be analysed in subsequent reports.
See Michael Mason and Genevieve Carroll, “Who goes to church these days and
what do they believe about God?” Australasian Catholic Record (January, 1999), for a
detailed analysis of responses to this question.
2
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5. Progress to date in analysing the CCLS.
Every diocese and all participating parishes have received a preliminary report.
Each parish priest who requested it has been sent a report and analysis of the
Leadership questions concerning himself in Questionnaire A.
The Bishop and Council (or Senate) of Priests in each diocese have received a
preliminary report on the Questionnaire to Priests, and an ARC SPIRT grant has been
obtained to enable a graduate student to pursue a Ph.D. using this material.
All Catholic Education Commissions and Offices have received reports on the
Questionnaire to Parents of children at Catholic schools (Questionnaire U), and that to
parishioners (Questionnaire N), and a profile of Catholic Teachers on Questionnaire A.
Twenty-two clients–mainly church agencies, have received reports with detailed
analysis of the questions concerning each which were included in the survey.
6. Current tasks and challenges:
a) Methodological
There is an immensely rich set of measures–particularly at parish level. (In addition
to numerous questionnaire types completed by parishioners, a questionnaire completed by the
survey coordinator in each parish (V) contains an additional 230 variables about the parish
itself).
But there are plenty of methodological challenges to be faced in exploiting this
treasure.
At the individual level, the data are both stratified and clustered. Hence the usual
techniques for making estimates and determining their statistical significance, which assume
simple random sampling, are not appropriate; and calculating accurate statistics, particularly
for an analytical solution rather than an approximation, requires quite lengthy programs.
The survey for the most part is a one-shot picture in time; so there is often difficulty in
determining the directions of influence between associated variables and making causal
inferences; very complex patterns of interaction have been observed between variables at the
same level of analysis; these will become more complex again as hierarchical or multi-level
analysis is employed to take account of the individual, parish, diocesan and national levels of
analysis.
The data contain many measures at nominal and ordinal levels which do not lend
themselves to scaling; variables with markedly non-linear distributions or lacking equality of
variance. Instead of standard regression techniques, traditional nonparametric statistics are
often more appropriate, and new approaches to model building which do not presuppose
regularities in the data not verified in the present case.
We are sceptical of the adequacy of survey techniques to reveal the more subtle
aspects of “parish vitality”. When parishes which seem more vital are identified, we hope to
fill out the quantitative measures by securing richer qualitative information–e.g. from
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structured telephone interviews with the priests. It would be ideal to supplement this with
site visits and interviews with a variety of participants. This is beyond our present resources,
but perhaps some collaborator may emerge to undertake this qualitative approach.
b) Substantive:
i) theoretical: the prime topic is the secularisation process, viewed in the light
of current theory.3 Let us stipulate that ‘secularisation’ refers to ‘the process in which sectors
of society and culture are removed from the dominion of religious institutions and symbols’.4
This definition carries no implication that religion is in inevitable and terminal decline. See
Appendix A for a discussion of 17 hypotheses we have formulated with reference to the
secularisation process in Australia. See also the discussion of the Religious Experience
project in the accompanying paper on the Research Design of the CCLS.
ii)applied: the seven core projects within the CCLS, listed above under n. 3.
are the most urgent tasks facing us; particularly the first: the Parish Vitality project.
The principal objective of the survey’s ‘Parish Vitality Project’ is to arrive empirically
at a ‘thick description’ of ‘best pastoral practice’–i.e. what strategies of ministry assist a
parish to achieve greatest vitality. We know that leadership is one of these. But there are
most likely varieties and nuances in pastoral leadership which escape even the most detailed
survey-research and quantitative analysis. A psychologist, sociologist or anthropologist
might choose to undertake an up-close study of a few parishes which have been identified on
numerous indicators as high in vitality, and uncover far more about leadership in a vital
parish than the initial survey was able to do.
Those from whatever field with statistical expertise might choose to collaborate in the
building of predictive models of parish vitality from the existing body of very detailed data.
7. ACU and the CCLS
If the project is to be completed in the next three years, before the data become stale,
and in time to be of use to the Church, a number of collaborators are needed. The venture is
already multidisciplinary, involving sociology, psychology, theology, and pastoral theology.
It would benefit greatly from contributions from the perspectives of education, anthropology,
statistics and economics.
As already noted, a SPIRT grant has been obtained for a Ph.D. student to carry
forward the study of Priests Working in Parishes.
Funding is available for one graduate student (full-time) or two (part-time) to act as
research assistants.
3
See, for example, Rowan Ireland, The Challenge of Secularisation (Melbourne:
Collins Dove and National Catholic Research Council, 1988), Stephen L. Carter, The Culture
of Unbelief (New York: Basic, 1993) and José Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern
World, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.
4
Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1969).
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To facilitate collaboration from ACU colleagues, the CCLS questionnaires, the
Research Design paper, this lecture, and a codebook of the main questionnaire (A), have been
deposited in the library of each campus. Cleaned, fully-labelled and partially recoded datasets
will shortly be made accessible to authorised collaborators on the University’s computer
network in SPSS system file format. Users of other analysis packages can also be
accommodated.
Consultation among collaborators is envisaged via email, phone conferences and
video seminars, with an occasional face-to-face meeting. As work is commenced on each
major segment of the task, it would be invaluable to confer and suggest hypotheses and
avenues and techniques of analysis.
Collaborators will be asked, in addition to observing the usual ethical protocols
required by confidentiality, to refrain from discussing the survey in ways that may lead to
reports in the press, both secular and Catholic. We have a great deal of experience which
indicates that such partial disclosures of isolated findings leads to a distorted and
sensationalised presentation in the papers or other media. We believe that in present
circumstances, this can result in significant pastoral harm to some Catholic members of the
media audience.
Preceding the publication of a comprehensive report, one or more volumes of essays
by collaborators is envisaged: and there is scope for any number of papers resented at the
meetings of professional societies and/or published in their journals.
Like all universities today, ACU must anticipate that its academic reputation will to a
considerable degree stand or fall by the quality of its research. The idea has also gained
currency that the publicly-funded university must break out of the isolation of a cloistered
elite of scholars and be much more involved in dialogue with a wider educated world, and
collaborate in research with external non-university institutions. It should disseminate
knowledge to an even wider clientele by public lectures. The CCLS project offers ideal scope
for this conception. Located within ACU’s Institute for the Advancement of Research, under
the supervision of Pro-Vice Chancellor Wolfgang Grichting, himself a sociologist with
international experience in surveys of this type, the CCLS is being conducted and funded
under the joint auspices of the University and the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference.
The survey is of intense interest to the wide Church constituency, and is uniquely
appropriate for ACU as a Catholic university. There is potential for the survey to be the forerunner of an Institute for Pastoral Research within the university as a permanent structure,
functioning to make available to the Church the fruits of research in a whole range of
disciplines.
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APPENDIX A
1. Hypotheses re “secularisation”:
Influences contributing to the decline of Catholic practice and identification
a) Some factors seem more external to the Church, beyond its control and unlikely to be
reversed:
1) Collapse in 1960s of the segregated world of Australian Catholics, with its all-embracing
Catholic institutions, which earlier insulated them from secularising influences.
Factors contributing to this were increasing social acceptance of Catholics since WW1
and particularly WW2; the increasing education and affluence of Catholics; the postwar baby-boom (1947-61) giving rise to ‘youth culture’ of the late 60s & 70s,
featuring a rejection of traditional authorities, and expressed in various social protest
movements, esp that against the Vietnam war; extremely strong emphasis on authority
of personal experience. This was the Australian context of the Second Vatican
Council.
2) Loss of ethnic solidarity; Catholics till the sixties were all ‘Micks' together: with a
common Irish or at least Irish-Catholic heritage, nurtured in our schooling (largely by
religious who were members of Irish-founded orders) on Irish music, the Irish tragic
view of life, Irish traditions of defiant underdoggery, and a smidgin of dour Irish
Jansenism. Multicultural immigration brought floods of Italian and other European
Catholics to whom this tradition was foreign.
3) Loss of status solidarity of an oppressed group in face of economic and political
domination by the Australian Protestant ‘establishment', as Catholics became more
educated and middle class and post World War II, experienced far less discrimination,
far less exclusion from the employment. The Catholic schools produced Catholics
with enough education to enter the Public Service, the police forces, and the law, and
eventually even the middle ranks of business.
4) Prolonged ‘baby-boom’ age effect--a demographic bulge of youth--an age when practice
has always been lower; the boomers (in Australia, those born between 1947 and 1961)
passed through their late teens and twenties between 1964 to 1990, and will in 1999
be aged 38-52.
5) Delayed family formation by the boomers and post-boomers: later marriage and
childbearing; in the past marriage and the advent of children have promoted religious
participation. Boomers, especially Catholics, are having much smaller families.
Move to low fertility among Catholics: young Catholic women are the least fertile of
all Christian groups.
5) With the still-increasing industrialisation of economic functions, women have continued to
lose status and meaningful location presiding over the domestic economy. Home and
family have now lost economic significance, and have diminished social functions
except as the locus of private relationships, some recreations, and producing and
raising children. A large part of women’s distinctive role, and their particular zone of
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power, is now greatly reduced; also the distinctiveness of that zone, and its capacity to
nurture alternative values to those of the marketplace. Some see this displacement of
women as one of the more important influences of the genesis of feminist ideologies
and their discontent with institutional authority structures. Increased workforce
participation by women is a necessity for most and an opportunity for some. Thus
they lose their insulation from the secularising currents of the industrial process.
There is a marked decline in their former higher level of religiousness.
6) A strongly secularist cultural environment exists, in which the ‘taboo on transcendence’ is
most effectively communicated by opinion leaders through the mass media. The
practical values and attitudes of non-attenders are most similar to those of nonbelievers. The maintenance of belief is increasingly under challenge and has little
social support. It requires conviction and action against the cultural and social grain.
b) Other factors seem more the result of the Church's chosen stance in response to a
changing and largely secularist world:
7) Church authority over beliefs, values and practices has lost legitimacy, conviction, and the
power to convince, and thus also practical sway, and not only over youth.
Considerable penetration of Catholic worldview and values by secularist scientism
and positivism, and to a lesser extent, by both liberal and fundamentalist Protestant
influences which get high media exposure. Popular loss of a sense of the Church's
doctrinal and moral authority from Vatican II's competing theologies and widespread
public dissent.
8) Competing pressures for weekend time from family activities, work, sport, travel; esp with
two working parents or in a one parent family. Shown in the CCLS as one of the
primary reasons people give priests for non-attendance. Perhaps only a ‘presenting
symptom’? Is there an underlying loss by the Church in the competition for time and
loyalty? Why?
9) The major process for induction of converts, the RCIA, is often ineffective in
communicating doctrine and moral truths and binding the initiate with no Catholic
family ties effectively into community, and thus in producing persevering initiates.
Some evidence that as many as one-third of initiates have dropped out within five
years of initiation.
10) At a time when strong communal bonds are critical, and highly correlated with
maintenance of faith, they are typically weak and ineffective in parishes. People seek
‘warmth’ and access, find impersonality, rejection, disinterest or conflict. The
community is ‘out-competed’ by work and other socially satisfying groups. Any
inconvenient alteration e.g. of times of weekend Mass, is followed by lapsation of
some of the fragile instead of adaptation.
11) The majority of young Catholics in the Australia of the 1990s have never been
evangelised; a high proportion of older Catholics in critical need of re-evangelisation.
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12) Rapid increase in proportion of marriages which are mixed. A high proportion of the
Catholic partners in mixed marriages who were formerly active cease to practice. The
‘irregulars’--divorced, remarried, and de facto shun attendance.
13) Along with necessary renewal of liturgical practices, a rapid loss, in the seventies, of a
‘sense of the sacred’ in liturgy; a decline in popular personal piety and asceticism, and
in an effective spiritual nurture which takes account of personal religious experience
as a preamble to faith.
14) Growth of ‘institutional alienation': sense of separateness from a resented institutional
church; felt as ‘over against' the individual who has little access to influence over
decisions--especially women.
15) Inadequate incorporation into the active church of large numbers of postwar immigrant
ethnic Catholics; inadequate respect for / accommodation of their own religious
traditions, promoting their rejection of participation in a culturally unfamiliar Church.
16) Inability or refusal of many Catholics to understand or accept Church moral positions on premarital sexuality, contraception, some infertility therapies, divorce, abortion, but also
of some social justice positions.
2. Preferred alternatives to the ‘alienation’ hypothesis
The indications from the most recent research (NSSS93) are that the decline in
attendance does not seem to stem primarily from a sense of alienation from the institution,
which many have assumed to be the case. My view now is that the key hypotheses are nn. 7,
8, 10, 11, 12, 16 and especially 13 above. Capacity to resist the relentless pressure of the
prevailing secular culture seems weakest at these crucial points. This lack of grip seems to
me likely to be due to the failure of parish life to adequately nourish a contemporary faith,
and especially a failure to link faith with individuals’ primordial religious experiences. The
problem is more cultural than social. The church's ministries: evangelisation, liturgy, adult
education, RCIA, etc., do not adequately support a living faith which can be a light to the
world. We are losing the competition with secular culture for the hearts and minds of our
own people; the core experience of personal contact with God in Christ and the Spirit is not
strong enough, and loses place to secular indifference, leaving behind a residual identity
tinged with either nostalgia or bitterness, but no real conviction.
3. The roots of indifference
Michael Paul Gallagher (Struggles of Faith), describing modern unbelief,
speculates:
‘Just as Newman liked to present assent to faith not as a matter
of logic but as a complex convergence of positive evidence, so one might
speak of religious indifference as connected with various negative
convergences. Indifference is a passive happening, a non-decision rather than
a choice, and as such it may be understood as the product of a convergence of
four factors in modern life:
a) the deadening of the religious search [in the welter of superficial distractions in modern culture]
b) the failure of the mediations of religion to meet and speak with the culture
of today;
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c) the humanist context of values where the notion of God seems alien or
embarrassing to the mind;
d) the filtering down of the arguments of sceptical modern thinkers, (the
‘masters of suspicion’–Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud), and also of
Locke, Hume, Darwin and Durkheim, into more popular assumptions.’
4. Types of unbelief
Gallagher (ibid.) distinguishes:
1) Intellectual: classical atheism–comparatively rare.
2) Psychological: the situation of the person who has never experienced love or selfacceptance; the Gospel is too good to be true.
3) Social: few individuals are now able to stand against the structured weight of
secularism [reminiscent of Aquinas’s ‘major and minor’ believers–the second
group dependent on social and cultural support from the first].
4) Moral: God is seen as an oppressive figure of impossibly demanding moral
authority.
5) Religious: the unbelief of those drawn to fundamentalist or Eastern religious
stances.
He relates unbelief to
-a failure of religious teaching: religion is presented as authoritarian, doctrinaire; with
little experience of living faith, community nurture, prayer, or vibrant
worship. Children in such situations are unlikely to continue practice; they
need more explicit commitment before they are ready for this;
-failures of the church: leading to rejection not of the Gospel but of its carrier and its
presentation.
5. How can the Church respond?
a) ‘In a completely secularised society, it would be impossible for Christianity to be
accessible to the poor’ [people who lack the tools and opportunities for making religious
choices] (Daniélou, cited by Gallagher).
b) The mainstream diocesan church has its inevitable preoccupation with short to
medium-term maintenance of its administrative structures, especially given the shortage of
clergy.
c) Where is the ‘margin’ where Jesus ministered now located? Perhaps this margin
will in another way be the ‘cutting edge’, the leverage point--apparently marginal but in fact
central?