Research Notes...

Numbers of New Catholics Continue to Fall

In a previous post, we noted that infant baptisms have been declining year-to-year (as reported in The Official Catholic Directory; where the publication year represents totals for the year prior, e.g., the 2011 edition includes totals for 2010). We've also noted these are generally moving in step with the overall fertility rate, which has also been falling (more so since the recession in 2008). In each of the past three years the number of people entering the faith (of any age) has dropped below 1 million. Since 1947, during only one other period, from 1973 to 1979, did the annual number of new U.S. Catholics number less than 1 million.

Generally, the numbers entering the Catholic Church are nearly sufficient to keep up with the number of Catholics who pass away each year (of course each year some leave the faith, some come back after already having left, and additions occur from immigration of Catholics from other countries as well). However, this may not always be the case if current trends continue. Not only are infant baptisms in decline so are entries into the faith among children, teens, and adults. These had been steadily increasing from 1997 to 2000 and reached a historic peak of 172,581 in 2000. Then something happened...

In just one year, from 2000 to 2001, the number of these non-infant entries into the Church fell by more than 20,000 (down 12.6%). This drop predates the emergence of news of clergy sex abuse cases. In fact the number of entries into the Church increased from 2001 to 2002 when these stories emerged in the media. From 2002 the number of new non-infant entries stabilized until 2006 and 2007 where another steep decline occurred. There were more than 28,000 fewer non-infant entries into the Church in 2007 than in 2005 (down 19.2%). Since then, the decline has flattened out a bit but still continues through to the numbers for 2010. 

I am not sure how to explain the trends in the figures above in terms of causal events. But the shifts are significant and beyond random fluctuations (the average year-to-year change in non-infant entries since 1944 has been 1.0%).

Catholic and Protestant Parish Ministry Wages are Comparable

A companion piece to the CARA research released in the Emerging Models project's The Changing Face of U.S. Catholic Parishes is the National Association of Church Personnel Administrators report, Pay & Benefits Survey of Catholic Parishes, 2011 Edition using the same Emerging Models survey data. One of many interesting findings is how similar wages and salaries are for Catholic parish ministers and those working in similar capacities in Protestant churches in the United States.

The Protestant data used by NACPA are from Protestant: 2010 Church Staff Compensation Survey (Christianity Today International). The full NACPA report includes Catholic ministry pay data for 60 different parish ministry positions by region, parish budget, size of parish offertory, parish staff size, number of registered families at parishes, and by parish Mass attendance. The report can be purchased from the NACPA website.

Online Interest in All Things Catholic

Recently we wrote a post on an indicator of possible declining interest in Catholicism online. We now provide at the bottom of this blog, as well as on CARA's Frequently Requested Statistics, active tracking of U.S. Google search volumes for anything including the word Catholic. These can be compared to search volumes for religious and spiritual content in general. The figure automatically updates with new data. To see an expanded report just follow the "View full report in Google Insights for Search" link.

Catholicism in Spain

 

All eyes are on Madrid with World Youth Day underway. Spain is often lumped in with other European countries when people talk of the secularization and decline of Catholicism on the continent. Yet, each country really has its own story and Spain, much like Italy and Ireland, has not seen much of a loss in terms of identity and affiliation in the aggregate compared to other areas of Europe. However, it has seen a steeper drop in Mass attendance than both Italy and Ireland.

The good news? There are likely more Catholics in Spain today than ever. The figure below is based on census estimates and respondents’ self-identification of their religion and church attendance from the World Values Survey. It applies only to the adult population (age 18 and older). In 1981, there were an estimated 25.8 million Catholic adults in Spain and this had grown to 29.8 million in 2007 (most recent data available). 

However, during this same span of time (the bad news) the percentage of all adults self-identifying as Catholic and reporting that they attend Mass at least once a week, every week dropped from 41% to 15% (11.6 million to 5.7 million adults attending every week). In any given week 6.7 million adult Catholics are estimated to attend Mass at least once. This is equivalent to about 300 attenders per parish.

Growth of the adult Catholic population has not kept up with the overall adult population growth in Spain (+15.3% for Catholics compared to +29.7% for the population overall). However, this is not primarily because many people have stopped raising their children Catholic nor is it because some huge number of adults have left the faith. More important has been the crash in fertility in Spain (people having too few children to raise Catholic or not). Immigration has been essential for Spain to maintain its population growth. Whereas in the United States this has often led to Catholic population growth, this does not often occur in many areas of Europe. Instead, immigration there is often coming from non-Catholic countries. As the numbers of immigrants have grown in Spain, the Catholic population has become a smaller component of the overall population.

In 1964, the Spanish fertility rate was well above replacement at 3.01 (the replacement rate is an average of 2.1 births per woman—enough to replace both parents). This reached a low of just 1.15 in the mid-1990s before increasing slightly to 1.4 now. This increase is in part a result of a larger population of immigrants from developing countries who tend to have higher fertility rates. For most of the post-World War II era Spain did not have a significant inflow of immigration. That all changed in the mid-1990s with the creation of the European Union and the movement of economic activity to areas of Europe with lower labor costs. There were only about 500,000 foreign-born residents of Spain in the mid-1990s. This has increased to 5.7 million in more recent estimates. The largest groups of immigrants are from Morocco, Romania, and the United Kingdom. There are also segments of this immigration that likely bolster Spain's Catholic numbers coming from Ecuador, Colombia, and Bolivia.

The fastest growing religious group in Spain is the Nones—those lacking any religious affiliation (although they may still have religious or spiritual beliefs). Among adults, this group has expanded by 174% since 1981 and in 2007 represented more than 7 million adults residing in the country. That means adult Nones are similar in number to all adult Catholics attending Mass in an average week.

The Vatican estimates that there are 42.5 million Catholics in Spain of all ages as of 2009 (source: Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae, 2009). This would represent 92.5% of the total population. The World Values Survey estimated a slightly lower Catholic affiliation percentage of 82.3% among adults in 2007. According to Vatican estimates, there are an estimated 1,873 Catholics in Spain for each parish—significantly lower than the 3,834 Catholics per parish estimated for the United States. Although Spain is only 1/19th the size of the U.S., it has 4,520 more parishes. 

Above photo courtesy of Catholic Westminster at Flickr Creative Commons.

Who Will Be Behind (Parish) Door Number One?

Each year, CARA conducts a nationwide census of Catholic ministry formation programs, from seminaries to colleges to diocesan-run certificate programs. The 2011 data are in. This year, college seminary enrollments are up 1% and theologate enrollments are up 4%. Looking over the short-term trend it is apparent that college seminary enrollments are stable and the theologate enrollments have been on a slight upswing for the past five years or so. Diaconate formation programs have also experienced growth in recent years (for more see CARA's statistical summary).

But, there is another group in formation across the country—where an entirely different scale and pattern is emerging. These are the individuals who are not seeking to be ordained but are still in formation for Catholic parish ministry. These are the Church’s lay ecclesial ministers, a group that is difficult to count because they are difficult to define. Some of those in lay ministry formation programs are simply there for adult faith formation or may be studying theology and have no intention to become a lay ecclesial minister. Others are preparing for a vocation and a career.

What is a lay ecclesial minister?  In Co-Workers in the Vineyard of the Lord, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops describes this being characterized by: 

• Authorization of the hierarchy to serve publicly in the local church  
• Leadership in a particular area of ministry 
• Close mutual collaboration with the pastoral ministry of bishops, priests, and deacons 
• Preparation and formation appropriate to the level of responsibilities assigned to them 

The phrase “lay ecclesial minister” is intended to be a generic term, not a specific role description or title. Co-Workers states that the ministry is lay “because it is service done by lay persons [including vowed religious].  The Sacramental basis is the Sacraments of Initiation, not the Sacrament of Ordination.” It is ecclesial “because it has a place within the community of the Church, whose communion and mission it serves, and because it is submitted to the discernment, authorization, and supervision of the hierarchy.” It is ministry “because it is a participation in the threefold ministry of Christ who is priest, prophet and king.” 

The longest section of Co-Workers is on formation for lay ecclesial ministry. It begins by noting that the Church has always required proper preparation of those who exercise a ministry, citing Canon 231, which states that “lay persons who devote themselves permanently or temporarily to some special service of the Church are obliged to acquire the appropriate formation which is required to fulfill their function properly.”

In CARA’s work with the Emerging Models project, as well as other earlier studies on the topic of lay ecclesial ministry, a definition has been operationalized for research purposes that encompasses lay persons who are in paid parish ministry for at least 20 hours per week (CARA provides separate estimates including those who volunteer in these capacities). Currently the number of lay ecclesial ministers in the United States totals about 38,000 or about two per parish (up from 29,000 in 1997, representing a 31% increase). Fourteen percent of these individuals are vowed religious and 86% are other lay persons. Overall, 80% are female and 20% male. Four in ten are under the age of 50 (for more see: The Changing Face of U.S. Catholic Parishes).

Growing numbers of lay ecclesial ministers in parishes must mean that there are more and more lay people studying and readying themselves to live out these vocations...  Surprisingly no. 

Two facts should jump off the graph below. The first is the sheer numbers in lay ecclesial ministry formation programs. Even at its lowest point, it is well above the combined enrollments in seminary and diaconate formation programs. Second, after peaking in the early 2000s, and dropping sharply until more recently stabilizing, lay ecclesial ministry formation enrollments are more volatile than enrollments in seminary and diaconate formation programs.

Many theories have been proposed for the drop in the numbers: perceptions of a surplus of lay ecclesial ministers, effects of the sex abuse scandal, fewer lay people being entrusted with the pastoral care of parishes where a priest is unavailable (i.e., Cannon 517.2; totaling 411 U.S. parishes in 2011 down from a peak of 566 in 2004), volatility in the economy, closings of parishes and schools, or expected salaries making it difficult to budget the costs of obtaining the education and formation required. 

But, there also appears to be another important factor related to the number of lay ecclesial ministers enrolled in formation programs—the number of available programs themselves.  

 

When the number of programs drops, the number of students drops (Pearson's R=.864; the initial drop in programs precedes the drop in enrollments). These programs don’t usually consolidate; they are closed outright or offered only on an “as needed” basis. To some extent, if you cut the program they will leave and don't appear to look for or readily find other options…

If you are a regular reader of this blog you already know that the U.S. Catholic population is growing and the number of priests is expected to continue to decline (as the Mass attendance rate is stable—representing annually increasing numbers of worshipers along with Catholic population growth). Parishes are closing resulting in existing parishes, on average, getting bigger and having larger budgets and staffs. Yet, if fewer and fewer are in formation to replace today's lay parish leaders, should we expect a coming shortage of lay ecclesial ministers? Will there always be enough people behind the parish door to greet you, minister to you, educate you, help you? Maybe not if the current trends continue...

For more on formation statistics check out the 2011 CARA Catholic Ministry Formation Directory—available for the first time this year as an online, searchable database as well as in the traditional printed format.

-CARA researchers Melissa Cidade, Mary Gautier, and Mark Gray contributed to this post.