THE TABLET
March 8, 2008

The Future of Evangelization

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life released last week the results of a survey entitled, “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey,” in which over 35,000 Americans age 18 and older participated.  The survey finds that religious affiliation in the United States is both very diverse and extremely fluid.  One fact that directly reveals the state of Catholicism in the United States is that although one-third of the population is Catholic, only one-fourth practices today.  That means that ten percent of Americans are former Catholics. A loss of our adult Catholic population is certainly something of which we must take notice. 

The general trend in the United States is toward secularism, as Americans have declared themselves without any particular religion.  This is what the survey has to say about Catholics and lack of affiliation:  “While those Americans who are unaffiliated with any particular religion have seen the greatest growth in numbers as a result of changes in affiliation, Catholicism has experienced the greatest net losses as a result of affiliation changes. While nearly one in three Americans (31 percent) were raised in the Catholic faith, today fewer than one in four (24 percent) describe themselves as Catholic.  These losses would have been even more pronounced were it not for the offsetting impact of immigration.  The Landscape Survey finds that among the foreign-born adult population, Catholics outnumber Protestants by nearly a two-to-one margin (46 percent Catholic vs. 24 percent Protestant); among native-born Americans, on the other hand, Protestants outnumber Catholics by an even larger margin (55 percent Protestant vs. 21 percent Catholic).” (Further information is available on the Web site, (www.PewForum.org/ReligiousLandscape.)

Sociological surveys can bring facts to our attention; however, the interpretation of these facts is something left to others and not simply the researchers.  There are many reasons why there is a great loss of Catholics to the practice of the faith. At the same time, the Catholic Church in the United States is again becoming an immigrant Church.  We cannot rest on our laurels. We must continually become a missionary and evangelizing Church.  The call to the New Evangelization directs itself to those who are no longer practicing the faith and to those in special circumstances, such as immigrants, while at the same time reaching out to those who are unaffiliated. 

The current situation of the Church, committed to the New Evangelization in the third millennium, does provide us with an answer to trends that can easily be documented and trends which we also feel.  When we look at participation in weekly Eucharist, we recognize that only a small proportion participates.  As I have said in the past, we average about 250,000 people at Sunday Mass, which we can tell from our Mass surveys.  The Catholic population of the Diocese of Brooklyn is perhaps between 1.5 and 1.8 million; therefore, our Mass-going population in Brooklyn and Queens is between 17 and 13 percent.
Older Catholics can remember when the number was above 60 percent.  

Questions loom before us: Why have so many people left the practice of the faith or practice it only intermittently?  Is it the quality of our liturgy?  Is it the difficult moral code that Catholics are asked to live by? Is it the result of the sex abuse scandals in the Catholic Church?  It would be good if further research were done by the Church itself to find out the reasons for the lack of participation.  Whatever the reasons, however, and there are many, we as the Church of Brooklyn and Queens must redouble our efforts to witness to the faith through the programs of the  New Evangelization.

Perhaps we could take some encouragement from the New Rite of Christian Initiation and the Rite of Election, which was celebrated on the First Sunday of Lent.  On that day, 928 persons participated, 333 of whom are catechumens and never baptized, while others are seeking full communion with the Catholic Church, as well as others completing the sacraments of initiation.  These are not insignificant numbers of persons seeking affiliation with the Catholic Church, and yet how much better we could do.  Only 128 of our 203 parishes have participated in the New Rite of Christian Initiation. 

Over a year ago, a woman called the Chancery Office seeking to become a Catholic.  The telephone operator told her that she had to go to her local parish.  The woman responded that she did and was told that “we do not do that here.”  It is not easy to formalize programs of Christian Initiation. It involves catechesis and liturgical ceremonies; however, the future of the Church will depend on how well we reach out to others and evangelize.

The New Evangelization is by definition an exercise of “putting out into the deep.”  It must go beyond the limits of what we have done in the past, if the future of the Church will be one by which we make the name of Jesus known to those who have never heard it and even to those who have forgotten His name and seldom call upon Him. 

Join me as we continue our Lenten journey of prayer for the Church, its believers and also non-believers, that the saving grace of the Easter mystery may touch all.