Young Catholics ... Going, Going ... Gone ...

I came upon this article at NCR on a study on disaffiliation of young Catholics in the US entitled  'Young Catholics, going, going, gone..."
Link: https://www.ncronline.org/news/parish/study-asks-why-are-young-catholics-going-going-gone

Link to publisher's (St. Mary Press) original Study: https://www.smp.org/dynamicmedia/files/d005d252a8caebcc1193f6cb755fd234/5926_Sampler.pdf


In the article, (a personal acquaintance) Elizabeth Drescher's remarks are striking:

Elizabeth Drescher, an adjunct associate professor of religious studies at Santa Clara University, spoke at one of the sessions the day after the report was presented. She has studied and written about "unaffiliation" and says those trying to understand it typically approach in one of two ways, which she saw during the evening discussion.

It usually comes down to, she told NCR, asking either what's wrong with the unaffiliated — "Are they superficial? Are they narcissistic? Did they have bad parenting?" — or asking, "Why don't they like us?"

The truth, she said, is neither. It's much more complicated. At a time when we live longer lives, and religious identity is not sealed upon us at birth and violently enforced by the authorities, and global culture has been reshaped forever by a digital revolution, traditional Western religious structures no longer fit the bill.

"We still have the fantasy that people will orient their spiritual identity around an institutional framework that worships in a particular place and time," said Drescher. "But that's not going to really solve the problem. I don't know that it's a problem to be solved to fix disaffiliation, but to what extent can churches and other organizations engage and adapt to the cultural currents of the present age?"

My take:
Traditional religious structures and institutions might still have a role as filling (bluntly speaking, nothing but) a "niche" in the task of shaping people's spiritualities and religiosities nowadays but the vast majority of people in western societies have moved on from traditional religion and do not find an exclusive and regular attendance of traditional institutions necessary anymore. Religious institutions will just have to accept that. PERIOD.

In order to stay relevant, people and institutions that have been in the Religion-Spirituality business up to now must reconfigure themselves to become truly open, non-exclusive entities that welcome any sort of seeker (even if s/he comes only  irregularly) and that offer a plan and proposal for deepening one's spirituality. They should not be overly attached to preserving traditional forms of worship.

That is usually too high a cost to pay for traditional institutions who will still try: to preserve the status quo, to keep up their self-conviction of having a direct line to God, to not change "sacred tradition," to "impose" and authoritatively "demand" how believers are to worship and live. Hence, they will increasingly be shunned and consigned to powerless irrelevancy, except for a few people still willing to be "controlled" in a traditional way.


/jkk