Look Who Skips Church Most Sundays

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Look Who Skips Church Most Sundays!

It may be a mortal sin to miss Mass on Sundays, but that doesn't seem to bother more than 80 percent of Roman Catholics who live in Boston. The Associated Press reports that church statistics from the Boston Archdiocese show that fewer than one in five Catholics regularly attend Mass in a parish church. This figure does not include Catholics who attend Mass in non-parish settings, such as college campuses, chapels or hospitals.

While some of the blame can be placed squarely on the clergy sex abuse crisis, that is only some of it. Prior to the stunning revelations that many priests had abused children for decades, only about 20 percent of Boston Catholics went to church weekly. In 2005, just 17.3 percent or 319,559 of the 1.85 million Catholics in Boston went to Mass every Sunday. At the height of the clergy abuse scandal, attendance bottomed out at 15 percent. Cardinal Sean O'Malley told AP it was "certainly a concern," adding, "The Eucharist is the summit of our faith as followers of Christ."

What is the church doing about it? The cardinal is visiting local parishes and stressing the need for evangelism. In addition, the archdiocese has developed a recovery plan to serve Catholics at the parish level, including spiritual growth programs for youth and adults. Officials also hope that being open about finances and settling the abuse lawsuits will help the church gain credibility in the eyes of lapsed Catholics.

Still, the alarming news is that Boston's attendance figures are similar to that of other major Roman Catholic dioceses. AP notes the following attendance rates:
Chicago: 21.5 percent
Milwaukee: 29.1 percent
Newark, N.J.: 17.1 percent

The national average, according to telephone poll numbers (which may be inflated since it is self-reported), is 33 percent, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University. By comparison, in the 1950s, attendance at Mass hovered around 70 percent, according to Jay Dolan, a University of Notre Dame historian who has studied Mass attendance.