U.S. Catholics losing

More than a quarter of U.S. adults have left their childhood religion, according to a PEW survey. Catholics have lost the most, and “unaffiliated” have gained the most. While 31 percent of Americans were raised Catholic, today only 24 percent say they’re Catholic, and this last figure would be lower if it weren’t for the influx of Hispanics.

I can think of reasons for Catholic losses, among them the rigid hierarchy and the prohibition against women priests. But when I talk about myth and literalism, many who understand me are current and former Catholics. They “get” it, for some reason. A good number of Unitarian Universalists are former Catholics. I haven’t figured out if there’s something to this or just the towering presence of Catholicism in my consciousness.

Recent stories underscore my point about the hierarchy. Check out this report on Catholic bishops deciding that Reiki, a healing practice used by Catholic nuns, is a superstition! bishops on Reiki Scroll down to find the incisive and hilarious comments.

And there’s Richard McBrien’s report on “ominous rumblings” within the hierarchy itself over Pope Benedict’s stubborn refusal to heed warnings that could have prevented his blundering insults to other religious groups, such as his pardon of a Holocaust-denying bishop. Benedict blundering

The best summary of what’s wrong with the Catholic hierarchy comes from retired Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong. Spong
Besides their dodging of clergy sexual abuse, he faults Catholic hierarchs for being wrong on the celibacy requirement, on abortion, on the treatment of women, on end-of-life options, on gays, “and wrong on many of the great theological issues of the day.” Unwilling to discuss these differences, Catholicism identifies “its point of view with ultimate truth so that any disagreement is interpreted to be an attack on truth itself,” says Spong. He reminds us that, early in his pontificate, Benedict XVI even discouraged language allowing legitimacy to other Christian churches. “We own all truth”—a claim sure to create conflict in our global community.

Now an aside: People listening to me often bring up Spong, because we both debunk literal belief. I always add a description of religious myth, which I consider essential to understanding the religious impulse.

Although “this is a church walking steadfastly into yesterday” (Spong’s superb summation), I find most Catholics more capable than evangelicals of cutting through dogma’s outer shell to the core of meaning inside. While the official church squelches ideas and fusses about externals in the liturgy, ordinary Catholics practice their religion in heart-warming, life-giving ways. The Catholic Church has both sides— its shameful history alongside a glorious history of spiritual nourishment.

One more example of the shameful comes from Joan Chittester, a Benedictine sister. Chittister Here she writes, “it was a Papal Bull that authorized both conquest and slavery in the New World for hundreds of years" and “that women were labeled [by the Church] as witches from the 16th to 18th centuries influences social systems to this day."