The following comes from an Oct. 31 story by Russell Shaw on the website of Catholic World Report.
In the years since Vatican Council II, American Catholics and Jews have pursued a positive dialogue aimed, among other things, at exploring areas of common ground. Far from positive, but a crucial area of shared experience all the same, is the damage done to the respective religious identities of Jews and Catholics by assimilation into a secular culture becoming ever more hostile to faith. (If you think it isn’t, by the way, consider that some 20% of Americans now say they have no religious affiliation–up 5% in just a few years.)
On the Jewish side, the latest evidence of this process is the study of American Jews–the most comprehensive in a dozen years–released last month by the Pew Research Center. Not only has the percentage of adults who say they’re Jews fallen by half since the 1950s to under 2% now, but among those who still self-identify as Jewish, more than one in five report having no religion.
This is possible, the Pew people explain, because Jews can be Jews simply “on the basis of ancestry, ethnicity or culture,” without reference to religion. Now, it seems, a substantial number do just that.
This phenomenon has no close parallel among American Catholics. Or does it?
Of the 75 million Catholics in the United States, a little math shows that as many as 20 million aren’t “practicing” members of the Church as measured by at least occasional attendance at Mass. (Another 20 million-plus Americans raised as Catholics no longer claim any affiliation with the Church, but we aren’t talking about them.)
So what moves the 20 million non-practicing to self-identify as Catholic when asked about their religion? With them as with non-religious Jews, ancestry, ethnicity and culture–plus force of habit and a touch of nostalgia–seem as good explanations as any. And, explanations aside, the problem for the non-practiced religion is pretty much the same in both cases.
How did Jews get like this? Intermarriage has a lot to do with assimilation and loss of religious identity. The Pew researchers found that 79% of the married “no religion” Jews had non-Jewish spouses compared with only 36% of religious Jews. Similarly, on the Catholic side, it’s long been recognized that Catholics who marry other Catholics are less likely to divorce than Catholics in religiously mixed marriages.
Assimilation is central to what’s happening to both religious groups. The New York Times begins its account of the Pew study by speaking of the “rapid assimilation” sweeping through all sectors of American Judaism with the notable exception of the Orthodox. Near the end comes this quote from Jane Eisner, editor of The Jewish Daily Forward, who is said to have urged Pew to undertake the new research: “This should serve as a wake-up call for all of us as Jews to think about what kind of community we’re going to be able to sustain if we have so much assimilation.”
To read entire story, click here.
So many of my friends and relatives stopped going to church because of all the scandals or the silly sermons filled with jokes.
If Jesus can stay, why can’t they?
…because carrying the cross, Anonymous, is hard. Keeping company with Christ isn’t just our choice, it is the gift of grace.
Even the Apostles who had Our Lord walking, talking, and teaching them in the flesh every day fell asleep in the Garden. Not because they didn’t want to, but because the spirit is willing, but the flesh is incredibly weak.
And when you have crummy joke filled homilies does it really nourish the Faith of those in the pews???
If people stop attending Mass because of jokes and scandals, they were not going for the right reason in the first place. People will always disappoint, Gd will never disappoint.
Just so, Sheila. But when mass itself – God help us – becomes a penance for all the banal, entertainment oriented novelties intended to keep the masses in the pews, it can be overwhelming…
Church Militant TV has an interesting episode on Catholic Education vs ‘catholic skools’ (small ‘c’) – and the ‘Renaissance taking place in some of the smaller and newer thinking Colleges – particularly the R-Integration of Faith as part of the Catholic College Experience.
Catholic Education is under attack from so many fronts – probably the worst being the Tenured Gaystapo Activists leeching off the Church from Inside (think os Santa Clara, USD…) – who are so powerful that they even keep Authentic Catholics & Teachings Banned from Campus – as an act of ‘tolerance’ of course.
The Mega $$ transfer to this Twysted Systerhood and their Homosex Allies of huge sums of money for a ‘Professoriate’ dubious at best (Some from the Church – much from the inflated fraud of Federal Loans) has not only enriched the enemies of the Church…
But Impoverished financially those who would defend Catholicism, and morally corrupt tudents who must regurgitate their Anti-Catholic MISANDRY (Hatred of Men & Boys< Masculinity and Normal Heterosexuality) – just to pass the class..
Fortunately – these clowns are incapable of impoverishing the Truth – although it certainly needs New Champions using the Technology of the new age – to Newly Evangelize and Educate the Young.
Wise use of Technology & Commitment by those who actually care, can Free us from Caesar and the Taxes he uses to bind students to their financial masters long after graduation.
SEE Catholic College Controversy
https://www.churchmilitant.tv/daily/?today=2013-11-11
The assimilation problem eh. When one reads with an open-mind through this article one finds that our ancestral Holy Fathers are a whole lot smarter than modernists/liberals give them credit for. This assimilation problem is just one of the branches of the problem of mixing the Roman Catholic religion with other non-Catholic religions, the bottom-line is the initial watering-down of the Roman Catholic faith (which has truly happened according to this article, countless times and world-wide), then the lack of passing down the true faith to the fruits of the marriage, i.e. the children of the next generation. This assimilation problem is what our ancestral Holy Father’s keenly saw with the insight of the Holy Ghost and guarded against when they decreed that ecumenism and religious liberty were wrong and the Holy Fathers wrote encyclicals against these acts of reformation held so dearly now by the modern church. Is it any wonder that millions have lost the faith, and most sadly, if the Roman Catholic faith is not restored in them and the faithless do not confess and amend their lives to God, their souls will be lost for eternity. Pray the rosary for the restoration of Holy Mother the Church to appease God and the salvation of millions of souls.