Attendance
Parish
Diary
Father
Peter Daly
June
2008
Where
is Every Body?
According to the Catholic Directory,
the Archdiocese of Washington has
about
450,000 Catholics living within its confines, which includes
Washington, D. C. and five counties in
The Archdiocese has just published
the 1997 results of the annual "head
count"
take by ushers in every parish on all the Sundays of October.
That is
the best month to take the count. Kids
are in school, vacations
are
over and weather is good. Most people
are at home and able to get out.
The
survey shows that only about 150,000 Catholics in the Archdiocese of
one
third of the Catholics living in our Archdiocese. Where is every body?
The
Archdiocese of Washington is probably typical of the church as a whole
throughout the
urging
of pastors, a lower and lower percentage of Catholics is assisting
in the
Eucharist and joining in the common prayer life of the church.
Of
course, need to put this in perspective.
According to the surveys done
by
George Gallup and Jim Castelli, church attendance
probably peaked in the
religious revival years of the 1950s. All
churches, Protestant and
Catholic,
had a higher percentage of people coming than at any time in our
history. The percentages of today have fallen from a
peak that could
probably not be sustained. Actually,
probably about the same percentage of
people
are going to church in the 1990s as were going in the 1920s and
1930s. Down from the peak
years, but still a respectable showing when
compared to Europe and
We can never expect 100%
attendance. Even in the peak years of
the 50s,
when
practically every able bodied person got themselves to church on
Sunday,
the percentages never exceeded 80% or so, except in a few rural
dioceses. There are always a certain
number of shut-ins, sick people and
people
away on travel. Some people are too
infirm to get out and some
babies
are too young to take to church.
But even allowing for the 25% or so
who cannot come for one reason or
another, the figures are discouraging.
On the other hand, if everyone came to church, we
probably could not
accommodate them. I doubt that if you added
up all the seats at all the
masses
in all the churches in our Archdiocese, we could even accommodate
75% of our people who we list in our census.
My little parish church holds only 200
people. I currently preside at
five
Sunday masses each week. In the summer, I sometimes
celebrate six.
Nearly
all the seats are nearly always taken.
If all of the 1,900 or so
parishioners came on a Sunday, about seven hundred of them would have to
stand
on the porch and look in the windows, like they do on Ash Wednesday
and
Easter Sunday.
What to
do? I don't think anybody, not even the
omniscient Andrew Greeley,
really
knows.
Part of
the decline is cultural. It touches every religion in the
industrialized West. Christianity values
simplicity (poverty), modesty
(chastity) and acceptance (obedience) to God's will. The culture values
material wealth, eroticism, and personal autonomy (choice). Obviously,
when
people get beyond their childhood years, they have to decide.
Sometimes,
even though they were baptized and confirmed, they cast their
lot
with the culture not the church.
Another
part of the decline might be that there are too few priests and too
many
people. I cannot possibly have a
personal relationship with the 750
people,
who come to mass on an average Sunday, let alone the 1,900 or so
who
are registered in our parish. My
Protestant neighbors usually minister
to
about one fifth as many people and are therefore able to know their
people
better (though oddly, their level of church attendance is worse).
Perhaps
it is the liturgy itself. In an age of
entertainment saturation,
people
are not always used to participating.
Perhaps they expect to be
entertained in a way the liturgy cannot provide.
I don't
know what the answer is. However, I do
know that both the church
and
the people who stay away are losing something.
If they think the liturgies are mundane or
uninvolving, image how much
more
exciting liturgies could be if everyone was there and participating.
If they
think the parish is too cold or too impersonal, imaging how warm
and
inviting it could be if they would make an effort to greet someone and
stay a
few minutes after the last hymn to chat.
Perhaps
in our push for evangelization, as we approach the new millennium,
we
should figure out where the rest of the body of Christ is and why they
are
staying away. These are, after all,
people who have registered
themselves as members of our churches, but for some reason, stay away.