In this episode Trent examines recent survey data to show the real reasons Catholics are leaving the Faith and five simple things families can do to strengthen their children’s faith.
Welcome to the Council of Trent Podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
Hey everyone. Welcome back to the Council of Trent Podcast. I’m your host, Catholic Answers apologist and speaker, Trent Horn. In today’s episode, I want to piggyback a little bit on a subject that I raised in the previous episode. So yesterday, I talked about how kindness is a necessary condition for evangelization, but it’s not sufficient. Kindness, charity, holiness, works of mercy. We absolutely need to be doing these things. If we’re not doing them and all we have are arguments, all we have are persuasive defenses of Catholicism, it’s not going to reach people.
Trent Horn:
St. Paul says in First Corinthians 13, “I have all knowledge, but if I’m puffed up, if I do not have love, then I’m like a resounding gone.” So kindness is necessary, but it is not sufficient. In some particular cases, in some cases, there will be interactions where the holiness of an individual will bring about radical conversion in others, especially for people who need more of a spiritual kick in the pants, if you will. But there are many people, and that’s what I want to talk about today, many people who are not Catholic, or they are no longer Catholic in the sense that they no longer practice their faith, they no longer identify as being Catholic because they disagree with the teachings of the church.
Trent Horn:
So kindness and relational evangelism, if you will, as I said, that is necessary. Not always going to be sufficient. We have to engage people and realize that a lot of the reasons that people are not Catholic is because they disagree with the faith. And I think today will be helpful because I want to go through three different surveys that talk about the demographics and the reasons behind people leaving the church because you’ll hear people say, “Why do people leave a Catholic faith?” And some people say, “Oh, it’s just obvious. It’s the sex abuse scandal.” And that’s not the case.
Trent Horn:
There are some people for whom that is why they’re no longer Catholic, but by and large, that’s not the majority view. So I think it’s always helpful to go to the data, or data, depending on how you want to pronounce it. Is it data or is it data? Data is a character on Star Trek, right? Maybe I should say data. To go to the results of surveys, to find out the answers to these questions. So I want to talk to you about three of them. One is the 2009 Pew Forum Survey. The other is … What was it? The Publication for Religion … PRRI, Population Religion Research Institute. I can’t remember. It’s PRRI Survey. That was done back in 2016. Both of those are summarized on an article here I’ll link to in the description below at Brandon Vogt’s website. Brandon is the publishing director for Word on Fire.
Trent Horn:
So he works at Bishop Barron. He also has Claritas University. He has a lot of great courses there. Definitely check him out. Brandon Vogt, Brandon V-O-G-T.com. So this is an article here that does a great summary of the Pew Study, and then the PRRI survey. Then after that, I want to talk about a survey that was commissioned by The Pillar. The Pillar is a Catholic news blog/magazine. I’m not quite sure how to describe it, but The Pillar is very good. We have a lot of good coverage on the church and the news. It’s run by, I think, J.D. Flynn and Ed Condon. I know it’s run by J.D. Flynn. J.D. used to be with the Catholic News Agency. Now he does The Pillar. I really like JD a lot. I’d love to have him on the show here at some point to talk about how Catholics can distinguish real news from fake news and all these kinds of things.
Trent Horn:
So the article says, “New Stats on Why Young People Leave the Church”. So Brandon says, “In my book, Return: How to Draw Your Child Back to the Church,” a book I actually endorse. It’s a very good book. “People always ask me, ‘How do I get my son or daughter to come back to the church?'” And what’s hard is I’ve never met this person. So I don’t quite know how to do that. I know how to give answers for arguments they might have, but Return: How to Draw Your Child Back to the Church, that’s a really good book Brandon did that covers a lot of this. So it says, “A new survey released by PRRI entitled, Exodus: Why Americans are Leaving Religion and Why They’re Unlikely to Come Back is based on a survey conducted in August of 2016, with about 2,200 adults.” So Brandon includes the results from that survey, as well as from the Pew forums.
Trent Horn:
Pew does all kinds of surveys, and Pew did a survey of about 30,000 Americans. So it says here that both surveys reinforce the same dire picture as previous studies. Young people are leaving religion in droves, and the so-called nones, N-O-N-E-S, are on the rise, people who identify with any religion. Below, Brandon, he puts forward an executive summary, if you will, of both surveys. I think the first part deals with PRRI and what they say. So here’s some of the stats on the demographics where we’re at. First, 10% of American adults are former Catholics. I mean, that’s amazing that if you walk down the street, I mean, it’s going to be different in different areas, obviously, but on average, one out of every 10 people used to be Catholic. One out of every 10 people, right?
Trent Horn:
This is probably common for you. You talk to people. “Oh, yeah. I grew up Catholic. Oh, yeah. I went to Catholic school,” as their way of saying that they know the lingo, they’ve been there, been there, done that. But they’re not Catholic anymore. So where do they go? When Catholics leave the church, they become … When they leave, nearly half of them are unaffiliated. So I wonder if this survey had been done back in the ’80s and ’90s because there was also a bit of a concern about an exodus from the Catholic church in the ’80s and ’90s.
Trent Horn:
That’s what motivated Scott Hahn, Pat Madrid, Tim Staples, Jimmy Akin, Karl Keating to do Catholic Apologetics, because in the ’80s, especially, ’80s and ’90s, when Catholics would leave the faith, I think predominantly they were going to other Protestant denominations, usually evangelical Protestants. So it says here, “About one in four do go to evangelical Protestantism.” About one in four. “But nearly half, 49%, are unaffiliated or they just have no religion at all. They leave Catholicism. They apostatize, they completely leave the Christian faith.” About 13% join more than mainline Protestant denominations, and another 13% are other. They probably join another world religion, Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, they become Jewish, Muslim. But the unaffiliated, or nones, N-O-N-E-S, is growing a lot.
Trent Horn:
So it says that 25% of Americans identify today as nones, highest percentage ever recorded. The nones are now the single largest religious group in America. So if you call the nones a denomination, they would be the largest group. It said 21% of the nones were raised unaffiliated, while 28% of them were actually raised Catholic. When you look at a age brackets, age brackets today among the nones, 39% of young adults identify as none. So when you look at just, I guess, young adults today, ages 18 to 29, so I guess now … This was in 2016. So five years ago, that would’ve been the tail end of millennials, but definitely we call this Gen Z, Zoomers, if you will. It says among them 39% are nones, 15% are Catholic, nine percent white Evangelical Protestant, eight percent mainline Protestant, seven percent black Protestant, and then other Protestants, and seven percent belong to a non-Christian religion.
Trent Horn:
So another thing I find interesting, both in Pew and PRRI, is when people leave. When do people leave the Catholic faith? And typically, it is early. It is while they’re still at home. That’s why when we get to the report from The Pillar by J.D. Flynn when it talks about the domestic church, you’ll see why this is so important. Why it is so important. And I take this with a heavy heart and a big saddle on my shoulders. Do you wear a saddle on your shoulders? Wear a saddle on a horse’s shoulders. A burden upon my shoulders that I have three kids, no guarantee. I pray for them. I pray for their souls, for their faith, but the faith can slip away. Even the parents that try, they do the absolute best they can. There’s no guarantee, too. Kids have free will. They have free will. They can choose.
Trent Horn:
So if you’re a parent, and your kid has left the faith, I mean, don’t beat yourself up about it. And also, it may not be directly a result of your influence. I think if you’ve been derelict in your duties, you’re not going to mass at all, showing up on Christmas and Easter, talk about the faith disparagingly. If the faith is something that is a source of a burden, and it’s not an authentic joy for you, just like I have to make sure faith does not become a job.
Trent Horn:
It’s hard for me. My job is to defend the Catholic faith. So it’s a really blurred line between my faith and my job. and all of us sometimes get a little disdained about our jobs. I don’t want to have that bleed over from my work, which I love. I’ve got the best job in the world. I get to help people learn about Jesus. That’s great, but still, work is work. I would be so remiss if I treated the faith like a job, and my kids saw it that way, and they decided that’s not a position they want to sign up for. So it happens early.
Trent Horn:
According to The Pew Forums, 79% of former Catholics leave the church before the age of 23. According to PRRI, 90% of the nones, those who just have no religion whatsoever, left before the age of 29. Here’s where it gets shocking for me. Almost two thirds of them, almost two thirds of them leave before the age of 18. So if you have a religious kid, if you’ve got a kid who’s religious, let’s say seven or eight, let’s say you start with a sample group, 100% of them are religious at the age of eight, okay? Two thirds of that group of elementary school students, two thirds of them who do leave will leave before the age of 18. So it’s not like two thirds are going to leave. What I’m saying is of those in that group who will leave, two thirds of them will leave before they get out of high school.
Trent Horn:
So what do we do? Well, I’ll tell you one thing we don’t do. There’s a key moment, I think, and I got little kids right now. Soon, they’re going to be treading to young adult … Not soon. It feels soon at home. But there’s a point where we have to not treat kids like kids. We should always respect their innocence, but I think kids are capable at eight, nine, 10 years old of asking really hard questions. Go to Catholic Answers Live. Catholic Answers Live, our radio show, Catholic.com, we do kid Q&A, and kids call in with their parents’ permission and they ask really good questions.
Trent Horn:
And so if we don’t respond to them, if we treat … You cannot educate a high school student or a junior high student, even. You don’t educate a junior high student in the same way you educate a five-year-old. You can’t. For a five or six-year-old doing Sunday school where we’re just telling really good stories and instilling virtue, that’s great. But if you treat all youth formation like it’s just extended Sunday school, and all we have to do is teach them about the faith, and that’s enough, that is not enough. That is not enough. We have to teach them not only about the faith, but why the faith is true, why it is true, good, and beautiful, and why it is superior to every other alternative, and that it’s not a bad thing to say that. We should not act superior, hoity toity, prideful. But the faith is superior because it is true.
Trent Horn:
Now, [inaudible 00:12:42] council, we don’t deny what is holy and true in other religions, but we see where the fullness of the truth is. And so young people, they need to know that. And honestly, they should be exposed. They should know about all these other religions, all these other belief systems, know about them, what’s good in them, but also what is lacking in them, what is missing and why our faith is different, and then to authentically live it out, which I’ll get to here at the end of the episode. Let’s go down to why they are leaving. This is a good summary here, and it covers PRRI, the 2016 in survey with 2,000 adults, and Pew, but they get similar results.
Trent Horn:
So PRRI, about 2,000 adults in 2016, the most common reason why they left religion in general, why people are nones and they’re not religious at all, 60% said, “I stopped believing in the religion’s teachings.” Now that could just be lackadaisical. That could be apathetic. They just stop believing for no good reason, like, “I just don’t think it’s true anymore, or I don’t think it’s relevant or important,” and they gradually drift away, or they actively oppose it. But it’s very clear for 60% of them, “I don’t believe in it anymore, or I think that it’s false. I don’t think that it’s true.” 32%, “My family was never that religious growing up.” So they weren’t really instilled with it. Maybe they were nominally religious growing up, but then once they’re an adult, it’s easy to shed that if it was never really instilled.
Trent Horn:
This is interesting, 29%, “Negative religious teachings about or treatment of gay and lesbian people,” 29%. That’s 39% for millennials as to why they’ve left religion, and for those who are raised Catholic, 39% of them who leave, they say it’s because of this. Now this is statement is ambiguous. “Negative religious teachings about or treatment of gay and lesbian people.” Go back to the episode yesterday, right? This could mean that they saw Catholics who were mean, who used slurs, who engaged in negative and unfair stereotypes, who were uncharitable and did not express the love of Christ to people who identify as LGBT. So that could be “treatment of.” That could be what they mean. And if that’s the reason, that’s incredibly unfortunate because that’s not what God calls us to do.
Trent Horn:
But I find many times what they mean here, “Negative religious teachings or treatment of,” means the Bible saying, “Sexual relations between two men or two women is sinful,” the church saying marriage is the union of a man and a woman, the church not marrying two men or two women, that that is what they mean by negative religious teachings or treatment. And so there just is no amount of accompaniment dialogue, and those things aren’t necessarily bad in of themselves. There’s no amount of we can be really kind and gentle and warm and loving that will get around the fact that they’ll say, “I just disagree with the teaching. I stopped believing this teaching. I don’t think it’s true,” that I think for many young people that the teaching about homosexuality, for them, asking them to believe it, that they are as convinced that homosexuality is moral or celebratory, they are as convinced as they believe in the theory of evolution or even that the earth is round.
Trent Horn:
Telling many young people today, “To be Catholic you must believe that homosexual behavior is immoral,” many of them, that would be like telling them, “You have to believe that the Earth is round. I mean, that you have to believe the earth is flat.” They have been ingrained in it so much in our society. They literally have just been brainwashed so much so I was reading another article that said 40% of Gen Z identifies as LGBTQ. They identify as one of those things, even though throughout most of the 20th century, when we have done reliable surveys, people identify as LGBT is usually somewhere between one and two percent, and some words like 40% of Gen Zers identify because it’s hip.
Trent Horn:
It’s cool for many, many of these people, when they see in Hollywood, when they see among YouTube personalities, this is a heavy hurdle that we are going to have to address. And I think the only way we can really address it is to present to them a logical, emotionally fulfilling, consistent view of sexuality, that you cannot understand the church’s teachings on homosexuality unless you understand it’s teaching on sexuality in general. So I don’t believe it’s hopeless because I think a lot of people are sexually broken, wounded, and they see what the culture is offering on sex and sexuality is a bag of lies. It’s a faulty bill of goods that leads to emptiness or despair in many cases. Not everyone’s going to say they’re in despair following it, but I think that the church is teachings when lived out in a faithful, joyful, and consistent way, that’s something that’s beautiful.
Trent Horn:
I don’t know anybody, I don’t know anyone, religious nonreligious, atheist, I don’t know any hardened atheist who would sneer at an 85-year-old couple that has been for 60 years and is still happy and hold hands and feeds the ducks at the park. I don’t know anybody. You know what I mean? Like, “Look at those losers.” They’re not going to think that. Many of them, they might feel a sense of envy or disdain that these people have an enduring sense of happiness and fidelity that this world doesn’t offer because it values autonomy and pleasure more than faithful, sacrificial love. So I do think this is a big one. In the PRRI survey, it shows up a lot, 29%. We’re going to have to confront this with people, and we have to confront those who say the teaching is false to give them good reasons to think that the teaching is true.
Trent Horn:
19% said the clergy sex abuse scandal. So what’s interesting is that, and I’ve read other ones, actually, that placed it a lot lower. Other surveys have put it more around 10%. So this is a bit higher than I thought, but still, it’s 19%. It’s not the majority. It’s not the case. So even if you average it out, four out of five people who leave religion, it’s not because of clergy abuse or something like that. Though it’s interesting that the clergy abuse scandal is more of a factor for women leaving than for men leaving. So it could be the case of women are more likely to be victims of things like sexual abuse than men. So maybe they more identify with the harms that are involved there. I don’t know. You could speculate on that.
Trent Horn:
And then, finally, rounding it out as “A traumatic event in my life, and my church or congregation became too focused on politics.” Now this could be a fault. Putting now your trust in princes. I think that Psalm 146 says that, but sometimes they call it politics when it’s just the church is saying, “We should not make it legal to kill babies in the womb, and marriage is a union of a man and a woman,” and they say that’s too political. A lot of these same people who say it’s too focused on politics don’t mind when the church endorses their politics, like the church promotes certain views on immigration or healthcare or racism or things like that. Usually, it’s, “Getting involved in politics I disagree with.”
Trent Horn:
The Pew Survey in 2009 reached a lot of similar things. 71% gradually drifted away. 65% stopped believing in the religion’s teachings. So still pretty similar, though we see more, 43% spiritual needs not being met, 29% unhappy with teachings about the Bible. Oh, and this one, faith in flux, this is about Catholics who left. So this group, “Spiritual needs and teachings about the Bible.” This would be the people who probably leave to become Protestant, who a lot of times go to a worship service they might consider more charismatic, I guess, or something within the evangelical sphere of worship that they enjoy more. They like more of an in-depth study of the Bible, which, of course, you can have in Catholicism. We need to help people with that. And we still see here, “Dissatisfaction with atmosphere at worship services.” You hear that all the time, right?
Trent Horn:
“I didn’t get anything out of the mass.” And what’s hard is, well, you might not because when you worship, liturgy comes from the Greek word leitourgos, which means, “the work of the people.” So, “I didn’t get anything out of mass.” I don’t mean to be cruel or crude, but what we get out of mass is what we put into it. It’s like if you went to the gym, and I’ve done this. You go to the gym and you walk on the treadmill at 1.0 speed. The treadmill has a speed, right? And you go ramp it up or down. How many of you have set the speed to 1.5 and just watch the food network? So cruel. Why do you got to play the food network? Or I go there to watch cable news because I don’t have news, and I’m just going to waltzing along, and then I eventually quit the gym because I’m like, “Well, why don’t you go to the gym anymore?” “I just didn’t really get anything out of it.”
Trent Horn:
Well, what did you put into it? If you just went there and did the absolute bare minimum, of course you’re not going to get anything out of it. Similar with mass, with the divine liturgy. We will only get of it what we spiritually put into it, and we have to understand what we are doing. If we don’t understand the liturgy, we can’t do the work of the liturgy as we are a Royal priesthood, as the First Letters of St. Peter says. Finally, dissatisfaction with clergy at the congregation and founder religion they liked more. It also talks about the Diocese of Springfield did an exit survey, still pretty similar things there.
Trent Horn:
All right, let me go to The Pillar. This one came out. I want to say it was a month or two ago. It was 2021, and it talked about, “What are the habits that show people who are more likely to remain Catholic, and especially more likely to be weekly mass goers?” Because there’s a lot of people who will stay Catholic, but they show up at Christmas and Easter, and that’s it, and they don’t believe Christ is present in the Eucharist and they use contraception, and they see nothing wrong with homosexual behavior. So it’s still falling really, really short.
Trent Horn:
So The Pillar did this survey that was conducted between September 28th, October 25th, of a variety of Catholics and talks about them and retention, staying Catholic. So it compares here taking a child to mass. So if you take them less, not weekly, less than weekly as a child, when they grow up to be an adult, about 68% of them will still be Catholic, but only 12% of them will go weekly. So that makes sense, right? If you didn’t go weekly as a kid, you’re not going to go weekly as an adult. If you take a child to mass weekly, if you take them weekly, a higher percentage will be Catholic, not necessarily.
Trent Horn:
Well, let’s see. What is this? 60, 74%. So about six percent more will be Catholic in general, but it’s split. Three times likely to go to mass weekly if you went to mass weekly as a child. So that’s always very helpful, weekly, especially daily, if you can. But definitely weekly, obviously, is our Sunday obligation. Grace before meals. This is an interesting one. Once again, we don’t see a huge difference between staying Catholic or not. So if you never said grace before meals, that group, about 67%, two thirds stay Catholic. They get a little higher, once again, about 74%, similar to the previous one, stay Catholic. But you’re five times more likely, 43%, five times more likely to go to mass weekly if your family just said grace before meals, daily. A very simple thing to do. Always a really nice thing to do, and it’s great because it’s a short prayer. Kids can lead it. That’s always really nice.
Trent Horn:
In fact, the Pillar Survey said it showed a clear correlation between childhood practice and regular mass attendance later in life. It said, “These five things show a clear correlation, reading the Bible, volunteering like at a soup kitchen, prison ministry, church work, pregnancy center, those kinds of things, praying the rosary, going to confession, and Eucharistic adoration.” I’ll read them again.
Trent Horn:
So five things that are correlated with regular mass attendance later in life, as a child, if you live out your faith. So reading the Bible, volunteering, praying the rosary, going to confession, Eucharistic adoration. This does not mean this is a surefire silver bullet your kid will stay Catholic. It gives them a lot better opportunity, though. Gives them a better chance. It says, “People who reported that their childhood families have participated every month in all five practices had an 82% chance of remaining Catholic and a 58% chance of going to mass weekly later in life.”
Trent Horn:
Here’s interesting. Among those who said they participated in none of these activities as children, 69% still say they’re Catholic. So it’s interesting, 82% remain Catholic, 69%, they never volunteered, not rosary, never went to adoration, no confession, but only 10% of them attend mass weekly versus 58% who do all five. But what’s interesting here is that even if you do one, even if you do one thing or two things, 24 to 25% are more likely to go to mass weekly. It’s about two to three times as many just by adding one or two things. So that’s helpful. Oh, and this here, actually, Catholic retention rate based on parents accompanying children to mass. This is interesting because we always hear like, “Oh, it’s always the father, it’s always a father.” Fathers are very important. Very, very important. Really, though, this particular survey by The Pillar, it’s both.
Trent Horn:
If neither parent went to mass, they might still go to mass, 63% of those who went as a kid who didn’t go with a parent, maybe they went with a grandparent or an aunt or an uncle, were still Catholic, but only 13% of them went to mass weekly as an adult. If it’s just mother or father only, about 26% weekly mass going. But then it goes up the highest when your mother and your father go, and we see something similar, Catholic retention rate. When you ask, “What is your biggest influence?” If your mother and father are your biggest influence, you’re the most likely to go to mass weekly. If things you read on the internet is your biggest influence, that’s the least likely. So it’s about staying that influence with your children. And that’s why it’s important, though, to walk the fine line to not be a harsh authoritarian and not be a permissible person that just doesn’t really care. And I’m always trying to walk that line.
Trent Horn:
Usually, I’m permissible, and then I realize I’ve been too permissive. I snap into authoritarian and overreact. It’s like trying to find the pendulum swing, get it just right. So it’s about being authoritative without being authoritarian. Okay? And the biggest thing there is just the joy. And I would encourage you, find the community, find the liturgy that brings you joy. Your children will sense if you’re faking it. They will sense that. If you need to go to another parish, if your parish is just banal, if it is just, ugh, you cringe every time you go, try another parish. If it’s not spiritually working for you, I know people have some views on this, you family comes first. We’ve got to stay and fix our parish. That’s not your job. Your job is not to fix. You cannot fix the whole church.
Trent Horn:
Your job, if you’re a mother or father, you have a domestic church at home. You have a domestic church. In the Eastern rite, in the Byzantine church, you receive a crown. The sacrament of matrimony is called The Mystery of Crowning. You get a crown, the priest places a crown on you because you are the hierarchs, if you will, of the domestic church in your home. You’re like the king and queen, bishop of your home, if you will. It’s so important. So find that.
Trent Horn:
Maybe it’s another parish in the Latin rite that does Novus Ordo rite. Maybe it’s Anglican Ordinariate, maybe it’s a Latin mass, if you happen to have one still near you. If you have a divine liturgy, who knows what it might be? Or at the very least, even if the parish is okay, join a group or community that does praise and worship, for example. Not to replace the liturgy, but to supplement it, like during a weeknight, a Bible study, a rosary. Find the thing in the faith that brings you joy and let your children see that joy.
Trent Horn:
And hey, I’m always still trying to work on it. I’m not perfect. Sometimes I just don’t feel very joyful, but I’m trying. Do the best you [inaudible 00:30:02] but for the grace of God, [inaudible 00:30:03]. So pray for me. I’ll say a little prayer for you all. I hope this is helpful for everybody. I’ll leave links to these articles in the description below, and yeah, I just hope you have a very blessed day.
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