In Season: Millennials and Lent

Millennial Catholics (born after 1981) have a bit of a mixed reputation. On one hand some say they are more inclined to be orthodox and traditional. On the other hand some ponder whether this is a lost generation. The reality is much more complex and most often somewhere in between these notions.

It is the case that Millennial Catholics are less likely to attend Mass frequently and receive sacraments than their parents and grandparents. Their attitudes are not always consistent with Church teachings. Yet as Lent begins next week, Millennials will in some ways be among the most active Catholics this season.

A 2008 CARA Catholic Poll (CCP) includes a series of questions on Lenten devotions and practices. We were surprised to find that this is one area of the faith where there is little if any generational variation. Almost any other question you ask of Catholics does include significant differences. Lent is different.

More than one in four Millennials (27%) will receive ashes on Ash Wednesday, abstain from meat on Fridays, abstain from something else (in addition to meat on Fridays), and make extra efforts to help the needy or improve themselves. Fewer Catholics in all other generations will do all four of these things (see the green bars in the figure below). 

 

This differences above may be linked to the messages that young Catholics have received in recent years about Lent as they begin to develop the practices and habits they will likely hold throughout life. For example, many young Catholics now participate in service projects to help the poor in the United States and elsewhere during Lent and/or Spring Break in both high school and college. In some Catholic schools this has become a requirement.

As for other Lenten devotions and practices my hunch is that this is simply a period where Catholic identity is strongly reinforced. Next Wednesday if you are Catholic and there are no ashes on your forehead what are you saying to the local Catholic community or your family? Few if any one in the community may notice if you miss Mass but they will easily notice if you have not been to Ash Wednesday services next week.  

Also, Lent provides the opportunity for people to share their activities with others. Just the simple discussion of what one is giving up and the challenge that this creates provides something interesting to consider and talk about (perhaps even in a tweet). Not to mention Lent literally changes the menu. Is there any other time of the year McDonald's puts a poster of a Double Filet-o-fish in the window or Taco Bell starts making tacos with shrimp for a few weeks? As every professor knows the number one draw for any student activity is food. When there is a culinary element it automatically becomes more interesting.

There may be something of an effect from the Lenten messages provided by leadership as well. The image below is a Wordle created with the messages for Lent from John Paul II and Benedict XVI during the last decade (2002-2011). Wordle is a simple Linguistic tool that counts the frequency of use of words in text. It displays the most frequently used words as largest in size and places these randomly in a portrait. It’s part art and part context analysis.

Above one can see many of the words one would think to be often used (e.g., God, Jesus, Christ, life, love, and Lent). Yet also somewhat prominent are: justice, almsgiving, fasting, community, poor, poverty, and charity. I think Millennials have heard the message—perhaps even more than their parents and grandparents. Not only have they heard it but are a bit more likely than these older Catholics to fully live this out during Lent.

Is there any Catholic Left in “Lapsed" Catholics?

At a recent Fordham conference, “Lost? Twenty-Somethings and the Church,” Robert Putnam argued the following:

“Roughly two-thirds of people raised as Catholics in America are no longer practicing Catholics. One third of them are still devout practicing Catholics. One-third no longer call themselves Catholics. One-third of them still call themselves Catholics but I believe are really not involved in the Church. They may be in some inspirational sense Catholic, maybe their views, but they are not at all involved with the Catholic Church.”

This reflects the results presented in American Grace (e.g., Figure 5.1 on page 138). The first third Putnam refers to are “devout” Catholics who attend Mass with some regularity. The second third are the former Catholics that have now "switched" out. This group has been documented in recent years in several other larger studies (e.g., Pew and ARIS). These people, although raised Catholic are no longer Catholic and are either affiliated with another religion or are Nones (i.e., those without affiliation).

The final third is a sub-group that Putnam defines and labels as “nominal” or “lapsed” Catholics who attend Mass only a few times a year or less often. Putnam argued at the symposium that this final third is “Catholic but in name only” and “psychologically very secular” even though they still call themselves Catholic. As Putnam and Campbell note in Amazing Grace, “we take into account not only what religious affiliation a person claims, but also whether he or she is religiously observant” (p. 137) and on this basis they have sub-divided self-identified Catholics into devout and lapsed.

I have noted concern about the accuracy of Putnam’s Faith Matters survey data in comparison to other sources elsewhere. With his comments cited above I also am worried that the limitations of his data may be leading him further astray on this topic. The Faith Matters survey does not include a significant number of interviews with many specific religious groups or sub-groups for reliable measurement nor are the questions used of a specific nature (wording, context, and content specific to different faiths) to actually validly measure how “observant” one is in their faith (the book nor associated website does not list the number of interviews with important sub-groups of the sample or margins of sampling error for these sub-groups).

Putnam appears to believe that Catholics who do not attend Mass regularly have ceased being Catholic in any sense other than simply using an identity label. These people are seemingly characterized as having left the specific beliefs and practices of their faith behind and now some generically just believe in a Judeo-Christian God and perhaps sometimes continue the traditions of attending services at Christmas and Easter periodically out of habit and conformity in the same way they might ritually put up a Christmas tree and hide Easter eggs for their children.

However, I think Putnam’s lack of background in the study of religion (and of Catholicism specifically) has left him with an unfortunate blind spot and his data are too insufficient to uncover this. Putnam, is a political scientist who has spent most of his career studying political culture in democratic societies. Little if any of his work has been focused on sociology of religion and his survey of more than 3,000 Americans does not provide sufficient insight (nor sample size) to speak to some of the intricate realities of what Catholics (and more so those of even smaller religious groups) believe or how they worship (nor does his case studies in parishes in the Archdiocese of Chicago. … at one point in his remarks at the symposium Putnam awkwardly attempts to bolster his arguments by noting “I am quoting a senior official of the Chicago Archdiocese”). To fully understand the rich portrait of Americans of a specific faith one needs more than 3,000 interviews (e.g., recent surveys by Pew and ARIS include more than 35,000 each; see links above). And you certainly need to visit more than a few parishes in Chicago to say you’ve done any case studies that could create representative “vignettes.”

Let me be clear. I am not arguing that the “third” of those raised Catholic which Putnam calls “nominal” or “lapsed” Catholics are doing just fine. They are not. Catholics have an obligation to attend Mass weekly if they are physically able to attend and a Mass is available to them (not to mention other obligations). However, I think it is a gross misstatement to consider these Catholics “secular” or even generically Christian without a specific connection to the Church.

CARA has conducted more than 20 CARA Catholic Polls (CCP) since 2000. We now have in-depth interviews with more than 23,000 self-identified adult Catholics nationally. We have always found this group of infrequent or rare Mass attenders to be more than Catholics “in name only.” Instead on closer examination they seem still well “within reach” of the Church and are no lost cause nor as Putnam loves to say “on their way out the door.”

To begin let me be timely and topical (using data from CARA’s Sacraments Today poll from 2008—collected two years after the Faith Matters survey). Our survey results indicate that next week, more than four in ten of Putnam’s “lapsed” Catholics (represented by the orange bars in the figures below) will likely begin abstaining from meat on Fridays during Lent. Nearly half have a statue or portrait of Mary in their home. Nearly one in four of these “nominal” Catholics are actually registered with a local Catholic parish. More than one in four wears or carries a cross or crucifix.

It is absolutely true that Catholics attending Mass at least weekly (represented by the blue bars) are much more likely to do each of these things. However, it’s hard to sweepingly call a subset of Catholics members of their faith “in name only” when some are likely to be eating a fish dinner next Friday, while wearing a cross, with a portrait of Mary hanging on the wall behind them (perhaps even reading their diocesan newspaper... as a parish registrant). 

It is also the case that many of Putnam’s “lapsed” Catholics express religious beliefs that are central to the Catholic faith (i.e., Creed beliefs). More than seven in ten have absolutely no doubt in the Holy Trinity and nearly two-thirds similarly have no doubt in Mary’s immaculate conception. Four in ten express a belief in the Real Presence.

Even though a minority expresses a belief in the Real Presence, more than seven in ten infrequent Mass attenders say they find the Eucharist to be a Catholic sacrament that is personally meaningful to them (“somewhat” or “very much”). Even more of these Catholics find the sacraments of Baptism and Marriage to be personally meaningful. These three sacraments are the most widely celebrated by American Catholics, and regardless of Mass attendance we find that most who call themselves Catholic today find them to be personally meaningful. This is no generic Christianity and certainly not secularism.

If Putnam’s nominal Catholics did have “one foot out the door” why would so many say they are “proud to be Catholic”? Two thirds of this group agrees “somewhat” or “strongly” with this statement. Among Catholics this pride extends to the almost universal practice of baptizing their children in the faith and significant majorities of Putnam’s lapsed Catholics who are parents say it is important to them that their children celebrate their First Communion and receive the sacrament of Confirmation. It looks like they might need to step back through the parish door soon?

Again, I am not arguing infrequent Mass attenders are “good Catholics.” The data cited above cannot and do not establish this. They simply indicate that the glass is not empty. We can argue if it is half full or half empty but we must recognize that there is still something “Catholic” there with this group that goes beyond a label.

This is just a sample of the evidence we have in CARA’s CCPs on this topic (more is available here: Sacraments Today) but it is certainly sufficient to indicate that there is a more complex portrait of infrequent Catholic Mass attenders than the one imagined in Putnam’s simple caricature of “Catholics in name only.” You just won’t find it in the Faith Matters survey nor in American Grace.

Notes: 

1. The CARA CCP results presented here do not separate out non-Hispanic white Catholics from those who self-identify their ethnicity as Hispanic or Latino(a). In his comments at the conference, Putnam notes that he is mostly speaking about "Anglo" Catholics because the Faith Matters survey indicates Hispanic Catholics "are more observant, more loyal, and more orthodox" and thus unlikely to be in the "lapsed" group. For comparison I ran the CARA data only on non-Hispanic white Catholics who attend Mass a few times a year or less often as well and there are only slight differences with two exceptions. For example, among non-Hispanic white Catholics rarely attending, 39% are registered with a parish, 39% abstain from meat on Fridays during Lent, 68% express belief without doubt in the Holy Trinity, 39% express belief in the Real Presence, etc. The exceptions are among parents in this group where only 54% say it is important that their children celebrate their First Communion and 49% say the same about Confirmation). 

2. In the Church's eye's a person baptized Catholic is Catholic (as long as they do not formally renounce their faith or are in a state of excommunication... yet even then their baptism cannot be "removed"). However, the standard in the social sciences is to treat religious self-identification as the indicator of affiliation or membership.

Photo courtesy of totalAldo at Flickr Creative Commons.

Family Pets and Fertility?

I was traveling last week and as I waited to board a plane a woman answered the first call for those with small children or others needing assistance. She passed me with a pink stroller. As I looked in the stroller to see the baby’s smile I saw… a dog! A cute dog but nonetheless not what I expected. She checked the stroller and as I boarded the plane I saw it on the entry ramp to the plane with a small label that clearly read “for dogs only.” That was my second surprise. They make strollers especially for dogs? You might be surprised what they make for dogs (see above)! Virtually anything you can buy for a child you can now buy for a dog… strollers, diapers, Halloween costumes, Snuggies… (In fact it is estimated that Americans spent $47,700,000,000 on their pets in 2010. That is similar to the total size of the U.S. Department of Education budget in the same year or the annual total gross domestic product of Belarus. Another aspect of the growing pet economy is an increase in the number of people leaving parts of their estates to their pets).

On the plane as I was reading the “news”  this quote from Elisabetta Canalis, Italian girlfriend of actor George Clooney, caught my eye: "Getting pregnant has never been an objective for me. My maternal desires are fully satisfied with my dogs." OK that’s too much of a coincidence not to be a blog post… (and I’m not the only one to have had this thought… ). I’ve come to learn that people like Ms. Canalis are known as “pet parents”—people who treat their pets the same way they would a human child. In fact if you want to start looking for gifts now National Pet Parent’s Day is celebrated each year on the last Sunday of April (April 24 in 2011, or on the Church calendar, Easter Sunday).

You want to do some social science of your own on this topic? Here is a simple experiment. Go to your local grocery store. Compare the baby aisle to the pet isle. Is the pet aisle bigger? I would not be surprised. Why? It turns out there are now more pets than children in the United States. Need more evidence? There are 8.6 million photographs on Flickr with the tag “dog” and only 8.5 million tagged as “baby.”

To explore further, I searched the iPoll archives and found a number of questions about pets. In surveys from 1947 to 1985 fewer than half of Americans reported having a pet (sometimes more specifically phrased more narrowly as a “dog or cat”). And then something happened in the 1990s. A majority of Americans became pet owners. Specifically dog ownership increased from about one in four to a third during the 1947 to 1985 period to more than four in ten since the mid-1990s. Could this increase in pet ownership be affecting fertility rates? Or more likely, could this increase in pet ownership be a result of declining fertility rates and the desire of Americans to have a parental connection to something?

The literature on Catholic fertility rates is substantial. One of my favorite pieces comes from Sister Leo Marie, O.P. published the 1944 article “Is the Catholic Birth Rate Declining?” in The American Catholic Sociological Review. Here she writes, “It has been the observation of many priests and teachers in the area studied that certain elements, such as birth control and mixed marriages, have weakened Catholicism in this region [mid-south] and have helped to bring about religious indifference and carelessness” (p. 177). Remember this is 1944! Yet it sounds like something you might have heard in a blog rant in 2004. In this article she finds that “the proportion of large families has declined appreciably and that of small families has increased” (p. 181). She concludes that “Only a superficial analysis is required to show that the main causes of the present declining birth rate are urban culture, the weakening of the moral and religious fiber of people, and the economic structure of present day society” (p. 183).

Unfortunately for Sr. Leo Marie this article was written just before one of the most extraordinary increases in Catholic (and non-Catholic) fertility in the history of the United States—the Baby Boom. So much for the effects of urban culture and the weakening of moral and religious fiber! (This should also serve as a lesson to those who believe the 1950s and 1960s were the “norm” for Catholic fertility. These were not. Catholic fertility was significantly lower in the 1930s and 1940s—severely affected by both economic depression and war well before the availability of the pill or abortion). Between 1956 and 1965 the Catholic marital fertility rate was approximately 4.3 children (see Westoff, Charles F. and Elise F. Jones “The End of ‘Catholic’ Fertility” in Demography, v.16 pp. 209-217). From 1966 to 1970 this dropped to 2.8 and from 1971 to 1975 down to 2.3 per woman. These fertility rates were significantly higher than non-Catholics even as they also experienced a significant jump in fertility between 1956 and 1965.

The decline in fertility and increase in pet ownership are indeed correlated yet there is certainly no evidence of direct causation in either direction. Today the American fertility rate is just above 2.0 at or near “replacement” level. However, this is primarily due to the high fertility rates of immigrants—many of who self-identify their religion as Catholic. The more relevant question is if pet ownership among Catholic today related to fertility? Below, I look to a 2008-09 American National Election Study (ANES) panel survey for some answers. I must note that this survey uses a sample that excludes non-citizens—as they are legally ineligible to vote. Thus, it is not a perfect representation of the Catholic (and non-Catholic) adult population. But it is as good a source that is available as polling about pet ownership is not necessarily a hot topic.

Overall, three in four Catholics (74%) report in the 2008 ANES study that they have a pet in their household (Take note that only 75% of all Catholic adults in the most recent General Social Survey indicate that they have ever had a child). This is significantly higher than historical rates of pet ownership measured in Gallup and other news surveys in recent decades. Other Americans with a religious affiliation are slightly less likely than Catholics to own a pet (67%). Catholic pet ownership rates are identical to those of Americans without any religious affiliation (i.e., the Nones).

Catholics clearly prefer dogs to cats or any other type of pet. About half of all Catholics (49%) have a dog in their household and nearly a third has a cat (32%). Fish (12%), reptiles (5%), and birds (4%) are also relatively popular selections. If you want a pony you better hope that your parents are not Catholic as only 1% say they own some type of horse.

By comparison, Nones are much more likely to be “cat people.” Some 47% of those without a religious affiliation have a cat in their household compared to 32% of Catholics, 35% of Protestants, and only 25% of those of other religious affiliations. Also interesting is that Protestants are only half as likely as Catholics to own a reptile.

Are Catholic pet owners less likely to have larger families than Catholics who do not own pets? Here we are up against the limits of the questions asked in the ANES survey. As a proxy we only have total household size which is a fairly good proxy. 

The results? Hypotheses rejected! Catholics with pets do not have smaller families than those without pets. On average, the household size of Catholics with dogs is 3.4 compared to a 3.2 person household size for all Catholics. Add cats to the equation and Catholic pet owners still have larger households. It appears that pets come along with children rather than the other way around.

Thus, if you are looking for scapegoats for declining Catholic fertility don’t look to the family dog (or other pets)... yet. More often than not a family dog is associated with larger Catholic households. I’m still not sure if they need strollers, a Snuggie, or a large place in any will, but I can report that there is little evidence in current data that openness to pet ownership among Catholics is replacing openness to children.

[...for full disclosure I must note that where pets are considered CARA is a dog office.]