Departures from the Church are especially pronounced among the young but are not limited to them.

In places like Australia, France, Germany and increasingly in the United States, which for many years differed from other places, the Catholic Church is haemorrhaging members.

There are many reasons people disavow Catholicism.

From what I've seen, those reasons are not often linked to a crisis of belief in God, at least not at first.

The crisis is Church-centric, but may eventually lead to a crisis of faith in God as proclaimed by the Church.

Certainly, a big factor has been the exposure of the sexual abuse of children by clergy and, even more, its aftershocks.

The strongest aftershock is the growing realization of how much the Church's bishops and other managers covered up, enabled, perpetuated and even perpetrated abuse not only of children but of other vulnerable people and women.

Now we see reports of a Vatican cardinal indicted for financial corruption involving €350 million (about US$416 million) given by Catholics throughout the world toward the Peter's Pence collection. This may mark the beginning of exposures that will touch every department in the Catholic Church's "head office" where spectacular corruption has been "business as usual" for centuries.

Yet in spite of the demolition of their collective reputation, bishops insist upon absolute rectitude (as they define it) from others in matters of sex and gender.

They seem less concerned with financial rectitude among major donors.

A majority of people simply ignore them.

More and more people take the next step beyond ignoring and walk out the door, no longer willing to be linked to hypocrisy.

The Catholic Church's public face is pretty ugly.

Those of us who remain must ask ourselves why.

Why do I still call myself a Catholic given the Catholic Church's official face, generally dispiriting history and the inevitability of more and worse revelations to come?

The first point to stress is that continuing to identify as a Catholic Christian is not necessarily, or at all, an endorsement of the management of the Church.

Some individual bishops may attract respect and attention, but that does not imply anything for the breed overall.

The Catholic Church is not mainly or even importantly a hierarchical social entity.

For most Catholics, their bishop is merely a name in the Eucharistic Prayer.

We are a people, a tribe, if you will. We are the largest cohort within the Christian People of God on pilgrimage to the Kingdom.

While at times that pilgrimage may resemble a grand procession, more often it is a stream of refugees battered by life and trudging on in hope, supporting one another when we need it and savouring our various respites and joys along the way.

Vatican II proclaimed, "The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ."

We share those joys and pains not as spectators, but as those who themselves experience joy and pain.

As a Catholic, I am one in that journeying throng that today and for 2,000 years has trudged through history, confident that God has not and never will abandon us whether we move on, stand still, fall or run back.

What sustains us is the typically Catholic sacramental sense, the conviction that the whole universe and anything and anyone in it is an encounter with God, most present in the Eucharist.

We use bread and wine, oil and water, words and gestures, postures and songs, minds and bodies. We venerate our saints known and unknown and one of them famously speaks in prayer of the Sun as brother and the Moon and even Death as sisters.

Catholic novelists like Georges Bernanos, Shusaku Endo, Graham Greene and Flannery O'Connor show God at work in human failure, divine glory in God's sad sacks.

When I look at the Catholic Church, I see my sisters and brothers trying to be faithful and share their faith.

• I see people dedicated to building justice and peace in God's world.
• I see servants of the poor.
• I see soup kitchens, dispensaries, schools, orphanages, hospital and prison chaplaincies.
• I see saints and sinners.
• I see sad sacks serving sad sacks as we journey to God.

In them, I see Christ at work in the world. I meet Christ calling me to that work.

When I sing in the hymn Jerusalem, My Destiny, "here among you I have met the Savior, Jesus Christ," I sing of, to and as part of the Catholic tribe on the way.

In the community with which I worship, we sing it as an inspiriting march.

That is why I remain a Catholic.

The tribe is bigger than some of its chiefs.

It is as big as the world. It is big enough to include a sad sack like me.

And yeah, even some bishops.

• William Grimm is a missioner and priest in Tokyo and is the publisher of the Union of Catholic Asian News (UCA News).
• First published in UCANews.com. Republished with permission.

This characterisation is borne out by three recent columns written by Catholics who have left the Church over the sex abuse scandals.

None of the authors proposes any higher, truer teaching than the Catholic faith. None anticipates a happier tomorrow.

Each column is, in its way, a cry of despair.

• Melinda Henneberger, a journalist who knew and admired Archbishop Theodore McCarrick, has announced that she is leaving the Church - without a clear idea of what comes next: "I'm not even sure there's such a thing as a former Catholic, but I'm about to find out."
• Melinda Selmys, a blogger at Patheos, has decided that by remaining Catholic she was "enabling the abusive people who were using the name of God to promulgate a doctrine that was a lot more draconian than what I seemed to believe."
• Damon Linker, a columnist at The Week, has resolved to leave behind the "unbearable ugliness of the Catholic Church".

All of these writers are following a trail blazed by Rod Dreher, who left the Church after covering the abuse crisis in 2002.

Angry ex-Catholics

It is not an easy road, as Dreher has since observed. "The Protestants I've known who became Catholic were not angry at the church they left behind," he writes.

By contrast, "The ex-Catholics I've known tend to be angry."

Their anger suggests the disappointment of high ideals.

These ex-Catholic writers have not, to my knowledge, pulled their children out of primary schools, which according to some studies have higher rates of abuse than the Catholic Church.

Nor have they announced that they no longer watch NBC since the Matt Lauer scandal.

Dreher has acknowledged that the Orthodox Church, where he currently worships, is far from immune to financial and sexual corruption - but he can tolerate in the one Church what he could not in the other.

This reflects a truth acknowledged by both Catholic and ex-Catholic alike.

The Church proclaims a higher, more demanding teaching than any other religious assembly. Because Catholic aspirations are higher, Catholic sins are always more shocking.

Corruptio optimi pessima - or as DH Lawrence put it, "The greater the love, the greater the trust, and the greater the peril, the greater the disaster."

No other religion could produce villains on the scale of Marcial Maciel or Archbishop McCarrick, because their crimes mock the most beautiful creed.

Linker is eloquent on this point: "When I converted to the Catholic Church 18 years ago, I did so in large part because I was deeply moved by the act of self-sacrifice that the church places at its heart."

Because he sees the beauty of Catholic claims, he is repulsed by the brazenness of Catholic sin. Continue reading

• Image: Our Lady of Joy parish

While the results themselves were not surprising, the researchers said, the study suggests new ways the church can approach Catholics who are dissatisfied with what the church teaches or how it acts — including those so dissatisfied that they have decided to leave.

One of their key recommendations was for pastors, bishops and other church officials to respond consistently to questioning or angry Catholics with constructive dialogue rather than a simple reiteration of church rules or policies.

Jesuit Fr. William J. Byron, a professor of business at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia — who collaborated in the study with Charles Zech, founder and director of the Center for the Study of Church Management of Villanova's School of Business — several times cited a response of one disaffiliated Catholic who complained, "Ask a question of any priest and you get a rule; you don't get a ‘Let's sit down and talk about it' response."

Byron and Zech told conference participants at The Catholic University of America that many of the responses from lapsed or disaffiliated Catholics in the Trenton diocese matched what researchers have known from other surveys: They object to what they see as the church's unwelcoming attitude toward gays and lesbians or toward the divorced and remarried, they find homilies uninspiring, the parish unwelcoming, the pastor arrogant or parish staff uncaring, or they have suffered terrible personal experiences with a priest or other church official, such as rejection for being divorced.

Some of the former Catholics complained of priests being too liberal, while others cited "the extreme conservative haranguing" they heard in homilies - reflecting the intra-Catholic political divisions that reflect similar divisions in the broader U.S. society.

Surprisingly, Byron said, although all those who responded to the survey left the church for various reasons of dissatisfaction, "only half the respondents were pointedly negative" in their assessment of their most recent pastor. There were "many enthusiastic, positive responses" to most recent pastors, he reported. Continue reading

Sources

• National Catholic Reporter
• Image: The Rhode Island Catholic

The research uncovered five myths and realities about today's young dropouts. Continue reading more about the Five myths about young adult church dropouts

Image: Crocker Chronicle