Love Thy Neighbor: Interfaith marriage and the Catholic/non-Catholic next door

Chester Gillis, Dean of Georgetown College, has an interesting On Faith post on spouses of different religions ahead of Chelsea Clinton’s weekend wedding (she is Methodist and her husband-to-be is Jewish). Dean Gillis focuses on some of the issues and challenges interfaith couples often face.

Sociologists Jim Davidson and Tracy Widman have shown that there is a method of predicting where interfaith marriage is more and less likely among Catholics (see: The Effect of Group Size on Interfaith Marriage Among Catholics, JSSR, Vol. 41, #3). As shown below, their findings remain consistent in the most recent data available (The Official Catholic Directory 2010).

It is almost too simple. The likelihood that a Catholic will marry a non-Catholic is strongly and directly related to the likelihood that a Catholic will be in close proximity to other Catholics. Social scientists have long understood that proximity is an essential factor in the process of romantic pairing. “A strong determinant of your attraction toward others is simply whether you live near them, work next to them, or have frequent [in-person] contact with them” (Andersen and Taylor, Sociology: understanding a diverse society, 2005, p. 126). The data continue to show this is among the most important factors in the new era of online social networking and dating where it is now easier than ever to meet and socialize with fellow Catholics even when there are none living next door (or nearby).

In dioceses where Catholics make up only 10% of the total population, the average percentage of interfaith marriages celebrated in parishes is 41%. By comparison, this average is only 16% where 40% or more of the total population in a diocese is Catholic.  

Overall, 45,792 of the 174,210 marriages celebrated in U.S. Catholic parishes in 2009 were between a Catholic and non-Catholic (26%). This total of course does not include any other marriages outside of the Church involving Catholics that occur in other places of worship or in secular settings. However, a broader portrait is available in a recent CARA national survey of self-identified adult Catholics, where 28% of married respondents (within the Church or elsewhere) indicated their spouse is non-Catholic. Among never-married Catholics in this survey who said they are at least “a little likely” to be married in the future, only 31% of said it is either “somewhat” or “very” important to them that their future spouse be Catholic. 

Contrary to popular opinion or anecdote, interfaith marriages are not becoming more common among Catholics in the United States. The rate of interfaith marriage peaked in the 1970s and 1980s during a period where many young Catholics had left urban communities formerly established by immigrant Catholics in the Northeast and Midwest to live in suburbs and areas of the Sunbelt where fewer Catholics resided. In recent years the percentage of interfaith marriages has declined slightly from that peak as new waves of Catholic immigration have recreated majority Catholic communities in the South and Southwest.

The regression below (where each marker is a diocese) estimates (by the line through the markers) that a diocese where 5% of the population is Catholic will likely have about 39% of the weddings celebrated in parishes involving a Catholic marrying someone who is not Catholic. By comparison, the model estimates this to be 25 percentage points lower, or 14% interfaith in a diocese where the population is 55% Catholic. The model is not perfect and there are many other potential variables that might improve it but by population alone these are the statistical odds and oddities of love… even in the 21st century.

Above photo courtesy of Leo Reynolds at Flickr Creative Commons.

The Future is Now

An article I wrote for Our Sunday Visitor Newsweekly is online now and in print next week. It focuses on statistical projections of Church life 25 years into the future in 2035. One of the themes is how we will likely need to deal with parish and sacramental life that includes many fewer priests (i.e., if current trends continue).

One of the surprises of the research is that few Catholics say they have been personally affected by a shortage of priests yet in CARA Catholic Polls (CCP).  Perhaps it’s all an issue of localized change? You may hear about one or more parishes closing in your diocese but these changes rarely get “aggregated” in a national perspective (... from 2000 to 2009, the number of parishes in the United States declined by 6.2 percent or -1,278 parishes).

I did the simplest research one can do these days and googled “priest shortage” for news results. Here is what I found in the first page of results for news within the last month:

• Taking its toll: "The Diocese of San Bernardino is closing a 50-year-old parish in the desert community of Joshua Tree, citing “the ongoing priest shortage” as the reason."
• Flowood priest growing leaders, fostering creativity: "With a priest shortage worldwide, more emphasis will be placed on church members running the day-to-day operations." 
• Fall River Diocese pulling chaplains from area high schools: "The Diocese of Fall River is removing all full-time chaplains from its high schools in the midst of a priest shortage."
• Parishioners celebrate last Mass at Nicoma Park church: "The Archdiocese of Oklahoma City is closing the church because of a shortage of priests. The church was formed in 1949."
• Monsignor retires from St. Joseph Church: "He's pastor to more than 2000 families at St. Joseph and he has no assistant because of the priest shortage."

Notice the trend in just this small set of recent news results where parishes are being closed and ministries altered not because there are too few Catholics but because of too few priests. Also note that these stories really are scattered all across the country from California to Oklahoma to Massachusetts. In the OSV piece I note that we are all likely in for “steady change” and that parish and sacramental life will be significantly altered for practicing Catholics in the years to come. CARA is currently conducting research for the Emerging Models of Pastoral Leadership project to identify and understand emerging pastoral leadership models that can sustain vibrant Catholic parish life in the United States in this changing environment.

This collaboration of the National Association of Lay Ministry (NALM) with four other national ministerial organizations—the Conference of Pastoral Planning and Council Development (CPPCD), the National Association of Church Personnel Administrators (NACPA), the National Catholic Young Adult Ministry Association (NCYAMA), and the National Federation of Priests’ Councils (NFPC)—is  funded by The Lilly Endowment.  It began in 2003 and is scheduled to conclude in 2012.

Research has and will continue to focus on many parish life issues including multiple parish ministry and parish clustering, recruiting and training the next generation of pastoral leaders, the role of finance and pastoral councils, and Canon 517.2 parishes where pastoral care has been entrusted to deacons or lay persons. The research has already or will eventually include surveys of pastors and those entrusted with the care of a Canon 517.2 parish, parish staff persons and volunteers, other parish leaders, as well as parishioners (in-pew). Bishops have been interviewed as part of the project and statistical trends have been and continue to be scrutinized. Much of this research is available on the Emerging Models website (linked above) now or will be available in the future once all projects are completed.

As I note in the OSV piece, unforeseen changes are always likely and let us hope and pray that the projections are off the mark and that the future only holds good news for the Church. I would not mind being wrong on this one.

Ecclesial Status of Catholic Education Leaders

The Catholic University of America (CUA) in Washington, DC has announced the appointment of John H. Garvey as the third lay president in the university’s 120 year history. 

Using the database of members of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities (ACCU), the largest member-based association of Catholic higher education institutions in the United States, approximately 55% of presidents at member Catholic colleges and universities are lay men and women. The largest proportion of presidents at member Catholic institutions is lay men (40%), followed by priests and religious brothers (27%).  Lay women are president at 15% of institutions, while religious sisters are president at almost one in five institutions (18%).

A similar distribution is evident among principals of Catholic high schools in the United States. Recent CARA surveys of these school principals for the National Catholic Education Association’s (NCEA) indicate 62% of principals of these secondary schools are lay men and women. The largest proportion of principals is lay men (41%), followed by lay women (21%).  Priests and religious brothers are principals at 19% of Catholic high schools. Religious sisters also make up 19% of principals at these institutions.

Catholic primary schools exhibit a very different pattern of leadership by ecclesial status according to recent CARA surveys of these school principals for NCEA. More than six in ten Catholic elementary schools has a lay female principal (62%). Lay men represent 20% of principals at these institutions. Only 1% of Catholic elementary school principals are clergy or religious brothers. Seventeen percent of Catholic primary school principals are religious sisters.

--By, Melissa A. Cidade, Director of CARA Parish Surveys
Special thanks to the staff at ACCU.

Note: Although religious sisters and religious brothers are canonically also lay persons the figures above distinguish between those who are religious sisters or religious brothers and other lay persons to describe ecclesial status.