How Many Catholic Converts Stay? A Quick Back of the Envelope Reality Check

It is Lent and Easter will soon be upon us. This is the time of year when the Church welcomes many new adults into the faith after they complete the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA). One of the most common inquiries we get at CARA is a request for “retention rates” for those who went through RCIA. How many stay Catholic? How many stay active in parish life?

Here is an example of an RCIA director seeking and discussing these figures on a Catholic message board:

“Hello! I am the RCIA director at my parish. The first class after Easter, I like to hit the class with a cold, hard statistic that I once heard. For new converts, 50% will not be attending Mass regularly one year after Holy Saturday. Is there any credible source for statistics like this? In looking around my parish, it seems that number is just about right. This is in spite of students attending classes every week for a year, making both 1/2 day retreats, Rite of Enrollment, Rite of Election, three scrutinies, and a 2-3 [hour] marathon Mass to welcome them into the church! Then, it seems they kind of just vaporize.”

At CARA we often hear even lower estimates. Some assume as few as 10% stay after becoming Catholic. Unfortunately there is no current and “credible source” for these statistics. The Church tracks the number of people entering the Church but does not observe how many remain after a year or some other period of time. Retention estimates are anecdotal.

Two years ago we presented a statistical profile of adult converts to Catholicism. At that time we noted that most who convert do so because they marry a Catholic and want to share the same faith. They also turn out to be among the most active and informed Catholics in the pews. It makes sense because they have taken a half year or more to formally educate and form themselves in a faith. Yet one could argue we are only studying those who go through RCIA and remain Catholic. What about those who don’t?

That got us thinking… A provisional English translation of the Rite became available in the mid-1970s and in 1986 the approved Rite was released. For most years since this time (and up to 2014) we have data from The Official Catholic Directory and the Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae on the number of adult baptisms and receptions into full communion. If one sums the number of entries recorded here you get a total just over 4 million.

Aggregating over multiple years and studies, CARA’s national surveys of self-identified adult Catholics (CARA Catholic Polls or CCP) indicate that 8% entered the Church as adults. Three-quarters of these adults (75%) say they went through an RCIA program. Thus, we can assume that 6% of all adult self-identified Catholics are converts who have been through RCIA.

How many Catholic adults are there? According to the Census, the U.S. population in 2014 was 318.9 million. Of this, 245.2 million were adults. CARA’s aggregation of national surveys for 2014 (Pew, Gallup, PRRI, GSS) estimates that 23.2% of this population self-identified as Catholic at that time. This means there were 56.9 million Catholic adults. Six percent of these adults, who we estimate entered as adults and went through RCIA, represents a total population of 3,413,199.

We know about 4 million have entered the faith as adults since 1986. Surely, some of these people have passed away or moved outside of the United States (…also some who entered the faith in another country may have moved to the U.S. and been captured in our surveys). Yet, even if assume none have passed away or left, then 84% of these entries still self-identify as Catholic and as we have described before they tend to be very active in the faith. For example, 62% attend Mass at least once a month (compared to 48% of cradle Catholics) and 54% go to confession at least once a year (compared to 24% of cradle Catholics).

So why do so many RCIA directors, pastors and others assume retention and activity is so low? Why don’t they see the people they formed in their pews? Because many really did leave that parish. But that doesn’t mean they are not Catholic and not active in their faith in another parish. Remember 72% indicate one of the main reasons they convert to Catholicism is marriage. What do people do in and around the time they get married? They move, buy homes, start families, start careers, and have kids. Don’t take it personally that they aren’t in your pews. It’s a safe bet that they are in another parish’s pews. Actually it’s more than a safe bet. Eleven percent of people CARA has surveyed nationally in-pew, during Mass, self-identifies as a convert to Catholicism. That is higher than their share within the self-identified Catholic population (8%). This is because they are more often attending Mass than other Catholics.

The 84% retention estimate is likely on the low and conservative end. At the same time this involved surveys and there are margins of error involved. It is still a very “back of the envelope” estimate. If anyone is interested in commissioning a study to confirm this please contact us here at CARA!

Image courtesy of Dennis van Zuiglekom.

These Are Not the Evangelicals You Are Looking For…

If you’ve been watching the coverage of the early caucuses and primaries you’ve heard a lot about Evangelicals. I feel like I have an intimate understanding of what Evangelicals like for breakfast and what their Oscar picks are. Yet virtually nothing is being said about Catholic, Jewish, or other voters—including the fastest growing religious identity group in the country, those without a faith (i.e. Nones). Are we all just Evangelical or not now? No, instead the media organizations that develop the exit and entrance polls with Edison Media Research have decided that only Evangelicals really matter at this stage. It’s the only thing they find interesting when it comes to religion.

I asked Edison Media Research in an email why no religion questions are being used this year as in past years. Alicia Colomer responded, “Each state questionnaire is decided upon individually and members from each of the networks comprising the National Election Pool determine which questions will be asked in any given state. The questionnaires for future primaries and elections have not yet been determined so it is not known at this point if the religion question that has been used in the past will be on future questionnaires.”

So am I just a cranky social scientist? Yes. But I also want to note that if you only ask respondents if they are an Evangelical or not, the data you get back is, for lack of a better term, crap. This is no secret to most social scientists who study religion (or elections). For example, here are results from the 2014 General Social Survey that show the religious affiliation of those who said they were “born again” or an Evangelical and those who said they were not.

Only 78% of “Evangelicals” are Protestants or other Christians. An additional 13% are Catholic, 2% are some other faith (including Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, etc.), and 7% have no religious affiliation at all. More important, among the 78% of Evangelicals who are Protestants or Christians, many have different definitions or conceptions of what an “Evangelical” is. It all makes for good television and graphs but in reality doesn’t amount to much of anything real in a sociological or theological sense. Regardless of measurement errors I will admit it is still an interesting group to study. It just does not reflect the group that most journalists assume they are actually talking about. Did Donald Trump win the Evangelical vote in South Carolina? Who won the “real” Evangelical vote?

The GSS above is no outlier. This is a fairly established pattern in surveys where respondents are asked the religious affiliation and the Evangelical question. For example, in the Pew Research Center’s original Religious Landscape Survey conducted in 2007 anyone who self-identified as a Christian was asked an Evangelical identity question. Only 61% of those who said they would describe themselves as “a ‘born-again’ or evangelical Christian” were members of Evangelical Protestant churches. An additional 27% were members of other Protestant churches. Eleven percent were Catholic and less than 2% were members of some other Christian faith (i.e., Orthodox Christian, Mormon).

The most remarkable thing about the media’s blind spot regarding voting behavior by religious affiliation is that this is likely the story of the 2016 election. In that story Evangelicals are no mystery. They will be voting as a majority for a Republican for president. Nones will be voting Democratic by a large majority (approximately 7 in 10). Although predictable, what makes the Nones so interesting is that they are growing and they are young. Will they turnout?

The most interesting group, arguably, is also the least predictable. It might be good to have data on an unpredictable group! Catholics will likely decide who wins the presidential election. They are the only major religious affiliation group which can “swing” from one party to the next in elections (for more see our analysis in OSV). They also have solid record predicting the winner of the popular vote. Every presidential candidate knows that it will be very difficult to win the presidency without a majority (or plurality if a 3rd candidate wins substantial votes) of Catholics. When will the media wake up and start tracking the Catholic vote? I have to thank the Pew Research Center for doing some of the first polling on this during this election season. I hope they continue to do so.