The New Evangelization has been a major effort in the Catholic Church for more than 40 years. Unfortunately, it has failed to stem several significant downward trends among faithful in the United States.
Since 2000, 14 million Catholics have left the faith, parish religious-education participation of children has dropped by 24 percent, Catholic school attendance has dropped by 19 percent, baptisms of infants has dropped by 28 percent, baptism of adults has dropped by 31 percent, and sacramental Catholic marriages have dropped by 41 percent.
Something is desperately wrong with the Church’s approach to the New Evangelization.
The New Emangelization Project has documented that a key driver of collapse of Catholicism in the US is a serious and growing Catholic “man-crisis.”
Large numbers of baptized Catholic men have left the Faith, and many of those who remain Catholic neither know nor practice the Faith and are not committed to passing the Faith on to their children.
Recent research shows that large numbers of young Catholic men are leaving the Faith, becoming “Nones,” men who have no religious affiliation.
The growing losses of young Catholic men will have a devastating impact on the US Catholic Church in the coming decades, as older Catholic men pass away and young men fail to remain and marry in the Church, accelerating the losses that are already taking place.
While there are massive cultural forces outside of the Church (secularism, pluralism, anti-Christian bias, radical feminism, pornography, etc.) and missteps within the Church (failure to make men a priority, sex abuse scandals, etc.) that have contributed to the Catholic “man-crisis,” the New Emangelization Project has conducted dozens of interviews with top men’s evangelists that suggest a critical reason for the crisis is that bishops and priests have not yet made the evangelization and catechesis of men a clear priority.
Men are being ignored by the Church, and they know it. Continue reading
Sources
- The above article by Matthew James Christoff, who became a Catholic in 2006 and operates NewEmangelization.com, is from Catholic World Report.
- Image: The Catholic Sun