Google Searches Show Kansas and Nebraska are at the Top of Attendance Ranks

A second and unrelated source is consistent with the state-level Mass attendance estimates made in "Midwest Mass Attenders Outpace Rest of the Nation."

As it was noted in "Searching for Mass Online" one can use Google Trends to view how frequently Google users are searching for particular terms. This post had noted the trends in searches for "Mass times" closely mirror what one would expect from the Church calendar.

Google Trends can also zero in on where searches are coming from. See the screen shot below:

Searches for "Mass times" are more likely to come from people in Kansas and Nebraska than people in any other U.S. state. At the city-level Omaha and Kansas City, KS rank first and second. The top ten states are all ranked above average in CARA's estimates of Mass attendance.

Midwest Mass Attenders Outpace Rest of the Nation

In which states are Catholics most likely to attend Mass weekly? How many Catholics attend Mass in any given week in your state?

These questions are rarely easy to answer. Although dioceses do October head counts these are generally not made public nor are they necessarily reflective of Mass attendance in general.  Surveys rarely can provide an answer because these are typically limited to national estimates and there are too few respondents in any given state or region to make an accurate estimate.

Just recently it became possible to estimate answers to these questions with the public release of the data for the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life’s U.S. Religious Landscape Survey (conducted in 2007). This survey includes interviews with more than 8,000 Catholics (a national survey with 1,000 respondents typically includes interviews with only about 230 Catholics. CARA Catholic Polls (CCP) typically include 1,000 Catholics).

The major limitation of using the Pew study to look at Mass attendance is that it was conducted by telephone where people are more likely to “overreport” how often they go to church (i.e. say they go more frequently than they actually do) to an interviewer. Comparing results of telephone polls and self-administered Knowledge Networks' surveys, CARA has found that Catholics are more honest in reporting their Mass attendance (as well as frequency of going to confession and financial giving) when no human interviewer is involved (for more see: “The Nuances of Accurately Measuring Mass Attendance”).   

The analysis below utilizes Pew’s data and CARA’s results for a national survey of Catholics in 2008 where telephone methods were not used (Knowledge Networks' panel and survey methods were used instead). The analysis below uses the Pew estimates that have been adjusted using the CARA estimates to control for the overreporting of Mass attendance in the Pew survey.

The Pew survey estimates that 41.4% of Catholics attend Mass weekly. This estimate is generally considered too high in comparison to Mass attendance headcounts, academic time diary research, and CARA’s series of Knowledge Networks' polls (where no interviewer is needed).

By comparison, CARA Catholic Polls (CCP) conducted with Knowledge Networks estimate that 23.3% of Catholics attend Mass weekly (an estimate consistent with headcounts and academic time diary research). Thus, CARA’s Mass attendance estimate is 56% the size of Pew’s. If we assume that the level of overreporting by respondents in the Pew survey is consistent across regions and states we can adjust for it by statistically weighting these estimates down using the CARA Mass attendance estimates.

The tables and figure below include our best estimates for the percentage of Catholics attending weekly (i.e., going at least once a week, every week) and the percentage of Catholics attending Mass in any given week (excluding Ash Wednesday, Christmas, Easter, etc. where attendance is known to be significantly higher) using these data.

Mass attendance is estimated to be highest in Midwestern states where 26% of adult Catholics attend Mass every week and 35% of adult Catholics are at Mass in any given week (as some infrequent attenders are at Mass in any given week; for more see: “The Nuances of Accurately Measuring Mass Attendance”). Mass attendance is estimated to be lowest in the West (21% weekly and 29% in any given week).

In the tables below each state is either listed in normal font, italicized or bold. States in bold have a sufficient number of interviews in the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey to where the state level estimate can be considered reliable. Whereas those in italics are based on too few interviews and may not be representative. All other states in normal font are somewhere in between these two levels of precision.

Using CARA’s state Catholic population estimates (see: Measuring Up: Aggregating data to estimate the number of Catholics at the state level) and the number of parishes in the state in 2007 (when the survey was conducted) we also provide an estimate of the number of Catholics (adults and children) attending per parish in any given week.  

Although imperfect and subject to large margins of error these estimates are the best available. A comparison of these to actual headcounts would provide a better estimate (it is also likely that the Pew adjusted data still overestimate Mass attendance as well as not all social desirability pressure is removed in CARA’s self-administered surveys—some are still likely to overreport their Mass attendance using any possible survey method).

Among the states with the most reliable estimates Pennsylvania has weekly Mass attendance estimates that are above the national average. At the other extreme, Florida Catholics have weekly Mass attendance estimates that are below the national average.

Even though California and Nevada have below average Mass attendance percentages each of these states has a large number of attenders per parish because of the relatively small number of parishes in those states compared to the number of Catholics residing there.

You are cordially invited… Young Adult Catholics and Marriage

With the recent approval of the Bishop’s Pastoral Letter on Marriage, “Marriage:  Life and Love in the Divine Plan,” attention is again being shifted to the current state of affairs in Catholic marriage.  The document calls for, among other things, marriage ministry that “accompanies and assists people at all stages of their journey: from the early years when young people begin to learn about committed relationships to the later years of married life, and even beyond them to grieving the loss of a spouse.”  But, what is the current young adult Catholic’s knowledge and attitude about marriage?

In spring of 2007, CARA conducted a poll for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) to learn more about Catholics’:

• General familiarity and specific knowledge about Catholic teaching on marriage
• Consistency of respondents’ own views with various statements about marriage
• View of the acceptability of divorce, both generally and in specific circumstances
• General attitudes about marriage and divorce and influences on these attitudes

Using this poll, differences of attitudes and behaviors about marriage can be seen by respondents’ generation.  Interestingly, even though these generations are still coming of age, there significant differences between the Post-Vatican II Generation (born between 1961 and 1981, and more commonly called ‘Generation X’) and the Millennial Generation (born after 1981).

The youngest generation is more likely than their Post-Vatican II counterparts to say that marriage as a lifelong commitment and marriage as a calling from God are “very consistent” with their views.  Also – while 21% (1 in five) Post-Vatican II agree “somewhat or strongly” that “marriage is not necessary if a couple decides to have children,” only 12% (one in ten) Millennials agree “somewhat or strongly.”    

Interestingly, Millennials are more likely to say that marriage is “whatever two people want it to be” – 69% of Millennials “somewhat” or “strongly” agree, while 53% of Post Vatican-II “somewhat” or “strongly” agree.  These data suggest that Millennials understand marriage differently than the Post-Vatican II Generation.

The Post-Vatican II Generation and Millennial Generation even report looking for different attributes in a spouse.  Millennials are more likely than Post-Vatican II respondents to want a spouse as a soul-mate, to report being “very likely” to get married at some point, and to want to be married in the Catholic Church.  But – Millennials and Post-Vatican II are about as likely to say that it is “somewhat” or “very” important that their spouse be Catholic.  While 30% of single, never married Post-Vatican II respondents say it is “somewhat” or “very” important for their spouse to be Catholic, 31% of Millennials responded the same way.

But, what about divorce?  In their pastoral letter, the Bishops of the United States are particularly concerned about the divorce rate, saying, “…the incidence of divorce remains high. The social sanctions and legal barriers to ending one‘s marriage have all but disappeared, and the negative effects of divorce on children, families, and the community have become more apparent in recent decades.”  Millennial respondents are more likely than Post-Vatican II respondents to agree “somewhat” or “strongly” that couples don’t take marriage seriously enough when divorce is easily available.  They are only slightly more likely to agree that divorce because of financial trouble and because of falling out of love is not acceptable.

These differences may be a result of the spike in divorces during the Post-Vatican II Generation’s formative years.  When currently single, never married respondents who say that they are unlikely to be married are asked why, almost one in five Post-Vatican II respondents (19%) say it is because they witnessed a parent, other family member, or close friend in a troubled marriage and it has made them hesitant to marry (compared to less than one in ten Millennials, 7%).

It should be noted, however, that two in five Millennial respondents (43%) “somewhat” or “very much” believe that living with a partner before marriage decreases the risk of divorce (compared to 31% of Post-Vatican II).  On the subject of cohabitation, the Bishops find state that “Clearly, there is no substitute for the binding lifelong commitment of marriage, and by definition, there is certainly no way to ‘try it out.’”  They go on to argue that “at the heart of cohabitation lies a reluctance or refusal to make a public, permanent commitment. Young people need to develop the virtue required for sustaining such a lofty commitment.”

--By, Melissa A. Cidade, Director of CARA's Pastoral Assistance Surveys and Services (PASS)