Only 13% of Catholics Are Practicing

[00:00:11] A recent Pew study showed that only 13% of Catholics self identified Catholics pray daily, go to Mass weekly, and go to confession yearly. Why the dismal rate? We're going to look at that today on Crisis Point. And also we're going to bring up some signs for hope in the future. Hello, I'm Eric Sims, your host, editor in chief of Crisis magazine. Welcome to the program. Before we get started, just want to encourage everybody to smash that like button, subscribe to channel, let other people know about what we're doing here at Crisis. Also, you can follow us on social media at Crisis Mag or go to and you can also go to our website, crisismagazine.com put in your email address and we will send you our articles each morning. [00:00:54] Two articles a day every day except Sunday. And you maybe sometimes only one on Saturday. [00:00:58] And we promise not to spam you. Every once in a while, we'll send you an email with something we think you might be interested in, but we will not spam you, I promise. [00:01:07] Okay. So there's another Pew study that came out. There was one back, if you remember, back in February, I think it was, that was talking about a lot of different religious aspects of, of the United States. And, and I think the biggest one was the big stat about for every 100 people who entered the Catholic Church, 840, I think it was leave that made a lot of headlines. Well, the Pew study came out just recently, I think a week or so ago with another study, this time more focused on, well, only focused on Catholicism. [00:01:41] And there were a few different aspects to I want to break down here today, then also explain why I think there's actually good news, even though a lot of it, frankly, does look pretty dismal. So the main takeaway I got from it was right at the beginning and as 13% of Catholics pray daily, attend Mass weekly, and go to confession at least yearly. Now, this is something I've noted for a long time that most of these studies, they only talk about how often Catholics go to Mass. Like how often do Catholics go to Mass weekly? [00:02:16] And that's kind of a good indicator. Are they really practicing Catholics? But I've also thought, I've often thought you also have to see what their confession rate is because people might be surprised to know that a lot of Catholics who go to Mass weekly never go to confession. [00:02:33] And so clearly, if you're a practicing Catholic, like by a minimal definition of what we mean when we say practicing Catholic, you have to attend Mass weekly, obviously, and Holy day's obligation. But they're not going to get that in a survey. And you should go to confession at least once a year. Now, obviously it's better to go to confession more often than that, but you're going to go to confession once a year, you're going to go to Mass every week. That's kind of a minimal standard of practicing Catholicism. [00:03:06] And according to this study, only 13% actually do that. [00:03:11] Only 13% of Catholics self identify Catholics. Now this is something important to note is when we talk about Catholics in a study like this, they're simply asking people first, are you Catholic or do you consider yourself Catholic? [00:03:27] And so we all know that's a wide range of people. There could be people who stopped going to Mass 30 years ago who still say they are Catholic. [00:03:39] There could be people who go to daily Mass, pray the rosary every day, go to confession every week who say they're Catholic and everything in between that. [00:03:48] And so when I say Catholics here, I'm talking about self identified Catholics. [00:03:53] And it and from that, let me pull up the chart here again, 28% attend mass weekly. The pray daily. Only 50%. [00:04:03] I feel like that's almost a stat. [00:04:06] It's hard to say. I mean people say they pray daily who don't pray daily, I would imagine. [00:04:12] What do they mean by pray daily? Do they say a rosary every day? Do they say, do they read? Do they say certain like a prayer before a meal and that's it. There's a lot of different things you could interpret from that. But going to Mass at Least weekly is 28%. [00:04:27] Now that that number is actually about what I've seen a lot. Usually anywhere between 20 and 30% of self identified Catholics attend Mass weekly. [00:04:40] Now the total number of self identified Catholics is going down over the past few decades. [00:04:45] And so the number who attend Mass weekly obviously is going down as well. But about 28% attend Mass weekly and so but attend Mass weekly and pray daily and go to confession yearly. [00:04:57] That's only 13%. [00:05:00] Now according to this Pew study as well, 20%. I'm throwing out a lot of numbers here, so hopefully I will explain it well enough that you can follow what I say. I will put a link to the actual Pew study in the show notes if you want to break it down yourself. [00:05:16] So we have 20% of all adult Catholic adult, all adult Americans say they are Catholic. Now there are approximately 260 million Catholics. [00:05:27] I'm sorry, 260 million adult Americans. [00:05:31] If 20% say they are Catholic, that's 52 million people who say they are Catholic in America, they don't include kids on this. [00:05:41] 28% of those Catholics actually attend mass weekly. So about 14. I think that's like 14.5 million of them. [00:05:51] There's about 14.5 million people who attend Mass, Catholics who attend Mass weekly, but only 13%, you could say, are practicing Catholics, which is incredibly low number. In fact, another chart they had on here, which is amazing, is 13%. It's amazing. It's the. Literally the exact same number. 13% of Catholics actually seldom or never pray, and seldom or never attend Mass and never go to confession. So These are people, 13% of those 52 million who say they're Catholic actually never even pray or go to Mass or confession. So we know obviously they're nowhere near being a practicing Catholic. So that's 26% total. So 74% of all Catholics are somewhere in between there. So essentially, they go to Mass, they pray some, they go to Mass, some may, they go to confession some. [00:06:45] The point is, is like, they're, they're very middling. [00:06:48] And I think, you know, I know sometimes people get worked up about these surveys and they, they, they suspect them of being false. Like the Pew study, Pew Research center, has some type of animus against Catholics, and so they're going to show numbers that aren't really accurate. [00:07:05] Maybe they do have that, but I don't think that's true in this case. I don't think that's true in this case. [00:07:11] Because honestly, this fits with anecdotal evidence, my own anecdotal evidence of years and years of being working in parishes in the diocese, being a director of evangelization, talking to people, just interacting with Catholics and other Americans. [00:07:26] This does not shock me at all that you would have only 13% of people who say they're Catholic actually attend Mass and go to confession each week. [00:07:36] I mean, each year. Think about it. We know just anecdotally, we know a lot more people go to Mass and go to confession. All you have to do is look at the line for Communion and compare it to the line for confession, and clearly one is much longer than the other. [00:07:55] So we know there are less people who go. Now, obviously, you go to Communion every week. If you're in a state of grace, you don't have to go to confession every week. So you. It's not a perfect direct correlation, but the truth is, if everybody who went to Communion every week, if every single one of them went to confession yearly, the lines would be a lot longer, considering a lot of people would go more than annually. [00:08:21] So we know this anecdotally, just in talking to people, you just. You kind of gather Catholics, you know who. They don't go to Mass regularly and things like that. There's just a large number of them who still consider themselves Catholic, but don't. They don't go to Mass regularly. And so what we see here is, I mean, frankly, these. I don't see how you can say these are anything but dismal numbers. These are very dismal, but they're. They're the norm. [00:08:44] Basically, as long as I've been looking at these numbers, which is about 20 years now, I've been studying these numbers. These are very normal. I remember, I think it was in February. I was making a guess based upon the stats they have for people who go to Mass weekly, how many are actually practicing Catholics, based upon other numbers I had seen of how often people go to confession. And I guess in about 10%, so I was off by 3%. It's really 13%. So that's good. That's more souls who are doing what they should be doing. [00:09:13] But the. The fact is, we know this. I mean, this isn't. [00:09:17] I wouldn't be doing a podcast, frankly, if this was the only thing I was here to talk about, because we've talked about this before. [00:09:25] I think all faithful Catholics are aware of these numbers. And so I would like to look a little bit more at number one. Why are they so low? Maybe get some more information here why they're so low. [00:09:39] But also, the fact is there's some signs for hope in this survey and some other surveys. It's not as depressing as it was just a few years ago. I think this is something we need to recognize. When I was looking at this maybe 10 years ago in 2015, there was nothing positive to come out of this. I mean, it was all looking, like, dire, but now it's like, yeah, there's still some dire stats here. Still not where we want it to be, Nowhere close to where we want it to be, but it's moving in the right direction in some ways. That's. I'll say it in some ways, not in all ways. [00:10:12] So why is it that so many people are not practicing Catholics? And so one of the things they show in this study, I'm putting this up on the screen, but you probably can't read that. But if it is, I'll keep it up there. And this is why people left. So this is not the same as the people who are still say they're Catholic, but They don't practice. [00:10:35] But it's a good indicator because the same reasons people leave the church, they also stop practicing the faith. I think that's a pretty close correlation between the reasons people say they left and reasons people say no longer. They say they're Catholic, but they actually no longer practice. I'm going to take this off the screen because I can't read this myself. You probably can't read it, but I'll give you what it's basically asking question reasons people give for leaving the Catholic Church. Now, one thing I want to mention about this is I've done studies like this before. I've read studies like this before. [00:11:10] And one thing you have to remember is you can't necessarily believe the reason given. [00:11:15] I don't know if there's any other better way to put it. Fortunately, the Pew study was smart. They gave people an option to choose multiple reasons, which I think is smart, because often people will choose a reason they think is the one they believe the most. Now, for example, they might say, oh, the Catholic Church is teaching on abortion, against abortion. I can't support a misogynist church like that. Well, well, the fact is they probably, it's more likely they left in college for other reasons. They just didn't feel like going to mass anymore. And over the years they became more progressive and eventually they decide they're, they're very pro abortion. And then they, they, they tagged that on. That's the reason they left the Catholic Church. But really it wasn't the, the primary driver of why they left. [00:11:56] Now, the number one, what I thought was interesting is the top three reasons given and you could give more than one reason again was number one was change beliefs, hold different beliefs or values, do not align with the church. That's number one. 18% was never committed in the first place or grew away from it. That's second place with 10% and stopped believing in God, gave up or disavowed religion broadly. That's third with 9%. What I think is interesting about that is notice that none of them are a specific event or issue. [00:12:36] It's not the church sex abuse scandals. It's not abortion or teaching on homosexuality. It's just this generic. I just don't believe in Catholicism anymore. Now I will say the church abuse scandals, what is listed number fourth as the fourth. And then going down a bit, you have like misogyny role, women, abortion issue, things like that. But all, you know, stance on LGBTQ issues is pretty far down there. But ultimately, this is my experience in talking To Catholics who have people who have left the Catholic Church or no longer practice. [00:13:10] It's not a, okay, I'm going to study Catholicism. I'm going to study other philosophies. I'm going to study, you know, what, what the church teaches about abortion or homosexuality or whatever. And I'm going to realize, oh, that they are wrong in that I'm going to reject that and I'm going to leave the church. [00:13:28] It's far more often, far more often. [00:13:32] They grew up in a very lukewarm environment, both at their parish and in their family. [00:13:40] And so the faith was never really grappled with. It was never really embraced by them. And, and then when they went off, they left home often to go to college or elsewhere. They simply did not see a reason why they should continue to go to Mass, continue to practice. Because the truth is they never really embraced it in the first place. [00:14:03] And you see that, you know, change beliefs, hold different beliefs, dies to not align with the Church, never committed in the first place or grew away from it, stopped believing in God or gave up, disavowed religion broadly. I mean, they basically do not see. So these are people who grew up Catholic, remember, they never really embrace it in the first place. There's very few people. There are some. I'm not claiming there aren't there are some, but there's very few people who really fully, in these days, fully embrace the Catholic faith and then later leave it. There are some and they often become very. [00:14:39] We kind of know about them, you know, maybe the Rod Dreher or the CS Koch or somebody like that. I never would question that they truly embraced the Catholic faith at one point. And I think it's weird when people, they will accuse them of never really being Catholic. We're not once saved, always saved people. I mean, that's not what we believe. Where. Oh, if you leave the faith, that means you never really believed it. That's malarkey. That's dumb. You can really believe something and then later, through whatever reasons, you can leave that. In fact, we're going to have a guest later this week. I'm hoping it, it should go through that's actually going to be a Catholic, somebody who's Catholic and then fell away and became something else. I'll just tease on that. And they're not Catholic now. We're going to talk to them though, about this. [00:15:21] Not about this specifically today, but just why they left the Catholic Church even though they were at one time a practicing Catholic. That's my teaser for the Next podcast. [00:15:31] So I think though this is important to note is that we simply have a situation in which the faith is not very well transmitted and taught. It's, there's not. We do very poor evangelization, we do very poor catechesis. And frankly this is the post conciliar wasteland that we live in. I mean this is the case. I mean it was, was it worse in the 70s and 80s than it was now? I mean, in a lot of ways, yes. I think parish life is worse in America. Again, I'm always talking about America unless I explicitly say otherwise, because I'm not claiming to have expertise in how the faith has lived in Africa or South America or even Europe. I think Europe tracks us a little bit, but just worse. [00:16:13] But the fact is, is that we have this wasteland where at parish life particularly, and this is something I, I hammer home all the time. [00:16:22] Parish life is the most important life when it comes to your interaction with the church. Most people aren't on social media following what the Pope does, but most people aren't like keeping track of everything, Pope Leo or Pope Francis, whoever does, or their bishop or anything like that. They simply go to Mass and they show up and they hear something from the pulpit, they hear something from the people in the pews with them and then they go home. And that's their main and sometimes only real connection to the Catholic Church. And frankly, we know for many decades parish life has been abysmal as far as transmitting the faith, living out the faith. It's been watered down, it's been neutered. It's beige Catholicism, as Bishop Barron has called it. And so really we have this decades long decline. [00:17:12] And I would say a couple reasons for that. One is I may wrote a whole book about one of the main reasons, deadly indifference. [00:17:20] And that book is about the fact that religious indifference creeped into the church over time and really took over how we, how our church leaders run the church. This idea that it didn't really matter that much if you're Catholic, sure it's nice, maybe even it's the best way, but ultimately whether you're Catholic or not didn't matter for your eternal salvation. [00:17:43] And so when that's the case, well then when people grow up with a, with a very bland parish life, when they leave, if they already, if they've kind of been told already, it doesn't matter if you practice the faith, well guess what? They're not going to practice the faith. A lot of them. And so we see this, this phenomenon happening a Lot, I think, you know, another thing, so religious indifference, another thing is being like the world. This, this just crazy desire. So many Catholics have this ghetto mentality that we need to live like the world, we need to be like the world, we need to be relevant, we need to have music like the world, we need to have church service like the world, we need to have talks like the world. All this stuff, you see it at parish after parish, you see it at conference after conference of just how can we be just like the world if the world. Sometimes they try to emulate the Protestant world, the evangelical process world. Sometimes they just try to imitate the secular world. [00:18:38] Well, if that's the case, you're not being distinctive. People are not going to make sacrifices to be part of an organization that's just like everybody else. Why bother? Why bother getting up on Sundays? Why bother going to confession, having that uncomfortable conversation with a priest about your sins and how terrible you are. Why bother doing any of that? So trying to be like the world is another reason. Also, I think today is the feast of Nativity of St. John the Baptist. And I think it his. He's a good model for why we have failed because we fail to be like him. What was his message? Repent. [00:19:14] Repent because the kingdom of God is at hand. And then of course, it wasn't just John the Baptist, it was Jesus himself who started off by saying, repent, repentance and believe in the gospel. [00:19:26] When is the last time if you don't attend, like if you don't personally attend like a TLM parish or real hardcore, like conservative parish. When's the last time you heard a pastor ever talk, tell people to repent instead. What does he say? Be nice. [00:19:39] Be nice. [00:19:42] And instead of saying you're a sinner, you could go to hell if you don't change your ways. Because repent. That's what it means. Turn around. [00:19:51] What it means if you tell somebody to repent, what you're saying is you're going in a direction that's leading to damnation. [00:19:56] That's what repent means. When you tell somebody, repent, you're saying, I'm assuming the way you're living is a path to damnation. And I want you to turn around and go the other way because I want you to go to salvation. I love you so much. I want you to salvation. We never hear the message of repentance in the church today. And so again, you have this case of people are just. They're not going to be attracted. Now here's the Thing to be clear, in our modern world, I'd be willing to bet the message of repentance would fall flat on many ears. I think if you gave the message of repentance a hundred years ago, you'd have a lot of Catholics who would kind of step up and say, yep, I need to start doing better. I need to do better. I mean, they might think doing better means going to confession once a month instead, once every three months. But the point is, they would say, yeah, I got to do better today because we're so coddled, because we have such a situation where everybody is a snowflake. Everybody is. I mean, you see how kids are raised and have been raised for a long time. Now you have this situation where this happens. [00:20:56] Well, when that happens, when somebody finally comes up, you say, actually, you know something? You're not doing things very well. You need to change how you're doing things. [00:21:04] When that happens, they're going to take offense and they might reject you. And this is actually why pastors don't preach repentance, because they're afraid of turning people off. [00:21:16] But the problem is, is that you get a situation like we do today, where there's tons of Catholics, 52 million of them, but very few that practice the faith. What would be better? 52 million people who say they're Catholic and only 14 million, actually 13%. What's 13% of. I'm going to do math on the podcast live because that is what is exciting. That's what brings in the clicks and the views. Doing math on the fly on the podcast. Okay, that's 6 million. 6.7 million. [00:21:46] 6.7 million people out there. Catholics go to confession at least once a year and Mass every week, and you have 52 million people say they're Catholic. Would that be better than if, let's say 30 million people said they were Catholic and 20 million of them went to Mass each week and went to confession? [00:22:08] So, yeah, you'd have 22 million people in that scenario who are so upset about being told to repent that they would reject even claiming they are Catholic. And the numbers would blare that out. You'd see that on every newscast, that, oh, my gosh, look at the number. How many fewer Catholics there are today than there were a year ago. There used to be 52 million people who said they were Catholic five years ago. Now there's only 30 million. The church is crashing. It's dying. [00:22:34] But maybe if you looked at the numbers more closely, you'd see Instead of only 6.7 million Catholics actually going to confession yearly and Mass weekly. You now have 20 million going to Mass weekly and confession yearly. I mean, I think that's a better scenario, frankly. [00:22:51] And so I think this is something where a lot of church leaders are afraid to preach repentance because they're afraid people will leave. And they're right, people will leave. [00:23:01] But again, what happens to people who stay? Do they become better Catholics? And also will it attract some people who wouldn't have come otherwise? I think yes, because if your, if your message is come here and on Sunday mornings, we'll tell you that we all need to be nice to each other. We'll have Mr. Rogers neighborhood on Sunday mornings. [00:23:22] Or they say, hey, come here and your life will be changed. I mean, think about if you go on YouTube. You know, I do, I, I, I go running. I ran, I ran this morning. It was brutally hot here in Cincinnati and humid and my time was not exact. I wasn't trying to race or anything like that, but it was slowly decreasing. Usually my, my third mile is faster. My first mile, not today because it was, it was brutal out there. But the point of this is on YouTube because it knows I'm a runner somehow. It will show videos, documentaries about runners and always, inevitably. And I love them, by the way. I love these like the ultra marathon documentaries and stuff. [00:23:59] Always. [00:24:00] The message is, look at the, what this person had to go through, the sacrifices this person had to make, the obstacles this person had to overcome to succeed in what they were trying in this race. [00:24:13] And that's what bring, that's what people are like, wow, that's neat. I want to be like that. I want to be more like that. [00:24:19] So a Catholic mass, if you went to your parish and said, okay, let's all be nice, you guys are doing a great job, let's go home now. Or you people need to step up, you need to make sacrifices, you need to fast, you need to do penance, you need to confess your sins regularly. [00:24:37] You need to do this because Jesus Christ calls you this. Which one is more attractive to the open minded, the person who has a good heart? I'd say that it's the latter. [00:24:46] So I'm not going to go complete. I'm going to kind of cut off there some of the discussion of why I think the numbers are so bad at 13% because, I mean, there are a million reasons. I know people will want me to just say Vatican 2. [00:25:04] Yes, Vatican II I don't think helped. [00:25:07] I don't think it's the reason though. We're at 13%. I think there's a lot of reasons, and I think I've said this before, this analogy before. I think the fire was blazing or at least starting before Vatican ii. And Vatican II was not water in a lot of ways, but it was gas at the very least, the implementation of Vatican ii. I think this can be said without controversy among people who are faithful Catholics. The implementation of Vatican II was gas on the fire instead of water. [00:25:37] I think that the, you know, a lot of the Council Fathers intended Vatican II to be water on the fire. [00:25:42] It ended up being gas. Whether or not that was because the way the documents are written or because of how they're implemented, I don't care right now. That's. That's another debate. Ultimately, though, the result was it made things worse by doing that. The point is, though, there's so many different things that are going on here. It's not a quick fix to. To do that. But now I want to transition from my Debbie Downer part of this podcast. So if you're still with me, God bless you because you went through my Debbie Downer rant here for the past 20 some minutes about how bad things are. [00:26:15] But I wanted to, hopefully you stayed on till now, because now I want to talk a little bit about some of the good signs. [00:26:22] So one of the things, this is kind of funny. I was, I saw this pew survey and I thought, I want to do a podcast on this. So I created the thumbnail for it. I gave a title to it, a little blurb for it and things like that, posted it on social media and posted. Posted on YouTube that's coming and all that stuff like that. [00:26:39] And then I started to really. And I saw I'd seen some of the survey enough to know I can. I want to make a podcast on this. But then I really looked into the survey and I found there was some information there I didn't even realize. And the main one was, for the first time, to my knowledge, a major survey included questions about the traditional Latin Mass. Now, here at Crisis, a few years ago, we did our own survey about traditional at Mass, but ours was not like this. What we did was we. We had the email addresses of every parish offers a TLM in America. And we emailed them all and we sent them a survey to the. So we assumed this was the pastor who would answer at least one of the priests there. We asked them about their attendance at their Latin Mass. And you could go back into our archives. I think it was 2021. I think yes, it was right. Yeah, it was right. When tradition Custodes came out, that this, that we did this survey, we started it before it came out and then released it after it came out. [00:27:33] But a survey like by a major survey organization like Pew Research Study that includes traditional at Mass, first of all, just including that as a question tells you something. [00:27:45] Ten years ago they would not have asked anything about traditional Latin Mass. You know that. I know that. I think five years ago they wouldn't have asked anything about the traditional Latin Mass. However, now it's something even people outside the church are recognized is a movement, a force within the Catholic Church. And I think honestly, one of the, the number one ways in which a traditional traditional Latin Mass was marketed and brought into the, the thoughts of the world was traditional as custodes. [00:28:17] I mean, so many people, I mean, I'd be willing to bet there was a large number of people who self identify as Catholics, had no idea, never heard of the tradition Mass, but found out about it because of Traditionis custodas. So anyway, so I think that's. First note that it's, it's important that they even ask the question that tells us something, that tells us that traditional, that the traditional Latin Mass is not so insignificant that they don't even know what it is. In fact, they think it's important enough they need to ask a question about it. So they ask. Here, let me pull it up onto the screen here. [00:28:49] I like the headline. 87% of Catholics haven't attended traditional at Mass in the last five years. Which of course is kind of silly to have it in that negative way since the traditional at Mass is a, is not the norm. It's not what almost the vast, vast majority of parishes actually offer. [00:29:05] And so the idea that you would think that you want to start with who don't attend, it's kind of weird. But what it does say is 13% of all U.S. catholics. And by the way, this is all U.S. catholics. This is not Catholics who attend Mass weekly. [00:29:23] 13%. So that means, let me do my, what do we say 13% was? 6.7%. 6.7 million. That means if this is true, 6.7 million people Catholics, because probably non Catholics attend as well. 6.7 million Catholics have attended the traditional Mass at least once in the last five years. [00:29:48] Don't tell me that in America at least the TLM is a minor inconsequential movement. [00:29:56] If 6.7 million people have attended it in the last five years at least once, that's significant. [00:30:03] But then we also see that 2% attended at least once a week. [00:30:09] So 2% of all Catholics, again, that's not just people attend Mass, but all Catholics attend the traditional at Mass weekly. [00:30:19] So being the math guy I am, I decided to run these numbers and compare this. Now, if anybody finds problems in my numbers, please let me know and I will correct myself. I feel pretty confident I did the math right here, but I could have made a mistake. So I posted on X about this this morning. But let me break down the numbers. So we know there's 260 million adults, adults in America. [00:30:43] 20%, according to Pew study, identify as Catholic. That's 52 million people identify as Catholic. We've already said that 28% of those attend mass weekly. That's 14.5 million people. [00:30:56] 2% of all Catholics at 52 million attend the TLM weekly. That's a 1.04 million Catholics. So 1 million people attend the the TLM each week. I will be honest, I'm skeptical of that number. I don't think it's that large. But I have to go with what they say. I'm going with what Pew says. [00:31:20] And if somebody has actual definitive evidence that this is wrong, feel free to correct me and, and I'd be happy to, you know, and, and send it to me. But this is what this says. [00:31:32] So that means that 7% of all weekly Mass attendees attend the traditional Mass. I got that number from 1.1 million divided by 14.5 million is basically 7%. [00:31:46] So 7% of all. Anybody who's attending Mass each week is attending the TLM in America. Another 10%, by the way, attend the TLM sometimes. This is a staggering number. So much so that I honestly, I have a hard time believing it. [00:32:01] My guess is it's lower than this. But I mean, I just say that because I just can't believe it. It's that. It's that. I mean, but why can't it be that big? The fact is it's. It's significantly more than it's often presented to be. [00:32:18] And I think this is where we have our sign of hope. Because of the fact is, we all know 10 years ago, five years ago, that number be a lot less. That number's a lot less than 1 million. Or even if, let's say their pew is wrong and they're overestimating, it's more like 600,000, 700,000. We know it's a lot less 10 years ago, 15 years ago, oh my gosh, it's minuscule. 20 years ago. It Almost is non existent. So what we've seen is a huge increase in the number of Catholics who attend the TLM at least somewhat. So from those numbers, that 10%, 7, 7, 7% numbers, that means 17% of weekly mass goers are at least TLM friendly enough that they, that they go to TLM sometimes. [00:33:04] That's a large percentage. And I would be willing to guess there's also a decent large number of people who never attended TLM really. But they're not antagonistical towards it, they're friendly. I meet people like this all the time. They're like, yeah, I don't attend tlm, but I think it's a great thing to have in the church. I have no problems with it. [00:33:22] So I just think these numbers are huge because remember the past five years, past four years have been spent by many church officials trying to reduce the number of TLMs in existence that are being celebrated, reduce the number of parishes that have the tlm. We've gotten the point where many diocese there might be one place where the TLM is celebrated and it's often an inconvenient location, an inconvenient time. And so in spite of that, we still see hundreds of thousands, maybe a million people attending the traditional Mass. Even in spite of all these restrictions, these ways in which we're trying to diminish who attends the tlm, it's growing like crazy. And I think this is a sign for hope. [00:34:10] Not by the way, by the way, I do think it's, it would be best for the church if the entire church returned to the traditional Latin Mass. Entire Church, Latin Church. I don't. Eastern Catholics should maintain, obviously their traditions continue to celebrate the Divine Liturgy as it's been handed on to them since apostolic times. But in the west, in the Latin Church, in the Roman Church, I do think the rite should be the Latin Mass, Traditional Mass. But that being said, even if you don't think that's the case and you believe the Noah's Order is the way of the future, you have to be encouraged by this if you're a faithful Catholic. Because we know people who choose the Latin Mass are choosing that greater sacrifice, are choosing that, that harder message that, that, that, that, you know, something countercultural. They're rejecting the anti Catholic culture that we live in and they're trying to live more faithfully as Catholics. I'm not saying every traditional Mass person is a faithful Catholic. All these, I'm just saying is you don't go there unless you're really trying to be A faithful Catholic. And so I think that is a great sign of hope because what we're seeing is, yes, the number of Catholics who attend mass weekly is going down, but the number of Catholics who attend, the percentage of those Catholics that pretend the TLM is going up. So I think this is a good sign for the future, for long term. Another survey I saw, this was on Fox News. [00:35:34] It says that Gen Z flocks to Catholicism. According to a Harvard university study, in 2022, 15% of Gen Z identify as Catholic. In 2023, just a year later, 21%. [00:35:49] That's a huge increase in one year. That is astronomical. Let's do some more math here. What percentage? And I won't do that. I'm just kidding, people. [00:35:57] That's a huge percent. I mean, 6% increase from. It's actually more than a 6% increase because it went from 15% to 21%. So that is a huge difference. And if you look at it a little more carefully, they said young men in particular were starting to identify more and more as Catholic young men. You know, Gen Z men were identifying as Catholic more and more. And I think this is honestly just. This is the best sign. This is a better sign than just the TLM numbers. Because when you have young men who are becoming Catholic, that is how you convert the church. I wrote an article five years ago. Here I'll put up the. [00:36:35] The screenshot of this for Crisis magazine. Before I was the editor chief of Crisis magazine called no Church for Young Men. It is to this day, I believe, still the most visited article. I think it's the second most visited article ever in the history of Crisis magazine online. [00:36:50] And it's because basically what I said was the way that you grow the church, how you evangelize, that you, you make the church successful, is you go after young men. They are the crux. 20 men in their 20s are the crux of the Catholic Church. Why do I say that? Do I not care about women? Am I misogynist? Do I not care about old people, about boomers, about teens or whatever? No. [00:37:16] What matters is people make decisions about their life, about the trajectory of life in their 20s. Yes, people have later conversions, changes, all that stuff. But in general, what happens is you grow up some way, Catholic, Protestant, atheist, whatever. But in your 20s, in America @ least, is how it works in America, you often have a moment where you. It's not one moment, but a time of life where you decide, is this how I'm going to continue to live or will I change? This is what happened to me when I was 22 years old, I decided I don't want to be prostitute anymore, I want to be Catholic. And so I made this significant change in my life and it happens to a lot of people. [00:37:55] For a lot of people in America, unfortunately is they leave religion, whatever religion they grew up and they just leave it. [00:38:01] If you get young men though, in their 20s to say I want to be Catholic, there's a real good chance that's how the rest of their life is going to go forward. There's a real good chance a high percentage of them will remain Catholic. But more importantly, they will be the ones who become fathers of families. [00:38:20] And it's been shown, it is obvious from just common sense that the Father leads the family spiritually. God bless those women out there, those Catholic women whose husbands are not practicing Catholics or not really living the faith like they should be. And they're doing everything they can to keep their kids Catholic. God bless you. What you do is so important, but we just know the reality is when the man, when the father is the leader religiously in the family, the children will follow. So if you get young men now, if they're decide to embrace the Catholic faith, they're more likely that their wife is going to be embracing the Catholic faith and their children will embrace the Catholic faith and they will grow up not in this kind of, oh, whatever type of, of environment of religious indifference and a bland parish and all that, but they will choose to go to a serious parish, which is why there's a connection between more young men, more Gen Z people embracing Catholicism and the increase of traditional Mass, because that's where you will find most of them. My parish, the TLM, is full of men in their, in their 20s. I mean we just have a whole bunch of them. And I remember my parish 20 years ago, my no sort of parish, which wasn't a bad parish, but it was nothing. It wasn't like superstar or anything. It, I mean 20 year old men were almost nowhere to be found. Men in their 20s and they're, they're like crawling out of the woodworks at my parish. And I think other TLM attenders, other attenders of a real reverent devout Novus Ordo parishes would say the same thing. [00:39:49] And so I really think that this is a great sign for the future. In fact, I would say this is like, okay, I'm patting myself on the back here a little bit, but things are playing out exactly like I thought they would and I predicted years ago. I remember, I think it was in 2020, I said, my guess is that the church will continue to decrease significantly in size. So by 2030, the church will be far smaller number wise than it was in 2020. [00:40:19] And 2020, of course was smaller than it was in 2010 and 2000 and what you know, and going back, but I always thought, and I always said this, is that it will get smaller, but those who are left will be more devout, they'll be more traditional, they'll be more serious about their faith. And from that base the church can grow again. Now, to be honest, I'm not really patting myself in the back because it's not like rocket science, what I'm saying. Joseph Ratzinger said something very similar back in 1970. [00:40:51] And so, but this is really how I think it was going to happen because the truth is, and it's going to sound maybe a little bit crass, but we had to get rid of, and we're still in the process doing it, get rid of the boomer influence. [00:41:04] And I know some people get offended when using the term boomer. I've always thought it means a mentality, not necessarily an age. It's a mentality that's most dominant in the baby boomer generation and that's kind of where it originated in our country. [00:41:18] But it's more of a mentality. There are 30 year old boomers and there are 70 year olds who are not boomers at all. [00:41:26] But it's the mentality that grew up in the church post Vatican II that was very much entitled, very much thought. We can decide what the church believes and does. We will shape the church in our post World War II, our Age of Aquarius generation image. [00:41:45] And because of that, millions of people left the church. It was a disaster. [00:41:50] That influence is waning. It's still there. Don't get me wrong, it's still there. I mean there's still lots of boomers. I mean, how old is the youngest boomer? When did the boomers in 1965, I think. So that's only 60 years ago. So if you're in your 60s, you're in the boom baby boomer generation still. I think it was 1965. Maybe it was 67, 62, I can't remember exactly. But the point is you still can be in your 60s, which isn't that old, and be a boomer. So we still have a ways to go. But the influence of that generation is waning and going down. So their, their weird hang ups about anything pre Vatican 2 are going away. Their animosity towards the traditional at Mass is going away just because they're going away, because they're going to meet their maker. They're dying off. I mean, that's just the reality. And their energy is dying off. So, I mean, you know, some boomer who's like 75 years old in a nursing home can't really do that much to change a church, unlike when he was 45 and he was making sure his parish had had all the latest, you know, Marty Hagen songs and felt banners. [00:42:57] So I do feel like this is. [00:43:00] We see definitive, concrete signs for hope in the church today moving forward. Yes. I still think, I still believe we're on a decline when it comes to numbers. [00:43:12] Less people will be attending Mass, less people will be identifying as Catholic in the next, you know, five to 10 years. I think it's. I don't know when it will stop and start going back up again, but I'd be shocked if it was before the 2000 and 30s. But within the group that's still attending, the demographics are changing. I don't mean like age demographics only. I mean like the demographics of belief. [00:43:35] What, how people perceive Catholicism, how they practice Catholicism. That's what's changing within those who actually go to Mass weekly. Because a lot of boomers, they go to Mass weekly. I'm not. I'm not claiming they don't. They might even go to confession, some of them, you know, yearly. But they wanted a church in their own image rather than the church of Jesus Christ. And the younger people who are going to Mass weekly, which is becoming the increasing number within the church, they want church in the image of Jesus Christ, not in. In their own image. [00:44:05] Okay, let me go ahead and look at the comments real quick in the live chat. I appreciate everybody, of course, who joins us on. On YouTube and on Facebook with, with and in the live chat and gives their comments. So let me go here we have Michael Grillo. We have been marginalized in the grossly secular society of the United States. Children are told in school there's no God and 35% are raised in no religion at all. Yeah, I mean, I don't think I. What happens often. I'm glad Michael brought this up, because what happens often within the Catholic Church, those of us who are kind of in the church, and we talk about churchy stuff all the time, is we forget sometimes about the impact of the wider culture on. On the Catholic Church, because we all live in the wider culture as well. I mean, the Catholic Church, Catholicism culture is a subset of the wider culture. And we're being hammered. And so, like all the Catholics who are sending their kids to public schools where they're being taught there is no God or Catholic schools which don't pass on the faith, that's going to have a huge impact. That's going to lead to only 13% going to mass and going to confession regularly. [00:45:06] Okay, John? I think it is. Esto says so. The Pew research recently revealed that 13 of Catholics have attended Tradition Mass at least once in the past five years, including 2% attained weekly. Yes. [00:45:20] No, I don't think it's 9.5, 1.5. No, I think that the problem is, is that I think you're. I explained this in mine. [00:45:30] Well, I think you're close. I mean, what I. Here, let me pull up what I wrote real quick, how I calculated the numbers, because if you notice here, it says that 13% of attended traditional masses once, but 2% attend at least once a week of all U.S. catholics, not U.S. catholics who only attend mass, but all U.S. catholics, which is 52 million people. 2% of that is 1 million. [00:45:54] So, yeah, it's okay. We could argue about the exact numbers. We could argue about this study, but I think we all know that generally we know what the trend is. [00:46:05] Even in spite of the persecution in Latin Mass, more people are going to it. Even in spite of every effort of the boomer generation to try to basically turn the church into an NGO or the Episcopal Church, it's not working. And young people are embracing the fullness of the Catholic faith. That's what's happening. [00:46:25] Theodore says, I believe at the root of both the clerical abuse crisis and these disturbing numbers is affluence. Affluent affluence and prosperity is at the core of most sexual and moral rot. You know, I'm not convinced. [00:46:37] I'll just say that I have believed that myself at times. [00:46:42] And there's the general thought that the more affluent a society is, the less religious it is. [00:46:51] But I have seen studies which I don't have on top of my head or in front of me. [00:46:55] That said, that's not necessarily true. It might be. I see the logic there. [00:47:01] The richer you are, the more you don't need to feel dependent upon a higher power, upon God, because you feel like you're dependent upon yourself. You've got money, you've got affluence. You don't need to worry about trusting God if you've ever worked with the poor. You know, the most striking thing I've always found with people who are really poor is that they have this complete trust in God. Why? Because who else are they going to trust? They have nothing. They have to depend on God every single day just for their livelihood. And so that develops a deep trust in God. So I'm not saying it's not true. [00:47:40] I would just, I, I, I, I'm not going to embrace that idea completely, though. I'm not 100 sure if that's true, because, yeah, we'll see. [00:47:49] Daniel Verney says it is quote, unquote, time to close the workshop. According to your friend and mine, Dr. Pia Kwesneski is so painfully obvious that an old Mass isn't broken, the new Mass can't be fixed. Well, we had, as you know, Daniel, we had Peter on about a month or so ago to talk about this book, and I think there is a lot to be said for his thesis that, that essentially, let's just return to the church Latin Mass. I mean, that's what I want to do. [00:48:17] That's what I want to do. [00:48:18] The reason I hesitate more than Peter does is I just don't see it happening anytime soon. And being realistic. So I don't. I'd rather just work to make the Novus Ordo parishes embrace more traditional aspects as kind of a gateway drug to the traditional Latin Mass. I know some traditions don't like that idea. They're like, no, just to get rid of it completely. And Peter's basically saying, saying that, you know, he thinks we should just stop trying to fix the Novus Ordo and just return to traditional at Mass. I respect that view and I basically agree with it. I just think realistically, we're not nowhere near there yet. And so I think realistically and practically, we should still be working to improve the celebration of the Novus Ordo by, you know, ad orientum, adding more Latin communion on the tongue, things of that nature. There was, by the way, a question in the Pew study about communion on tongue versus communion in the hand, which I was shocked by, in fact. Let me just see if I can pull it up here real quick. This is a complete aside, but it's my podcast. Why not? [00:49:18] Can I find it here? [00:49:20] No, I can't find it. Oh, no, I think it was under. Let me see. [00:49:25] Okay, look it up, though. And it was, it was interesting. Most people, of course, receive on, on the in hand. I mean, that's, that should be no shock to anybody. [00:49:34] But the percent who receive on the tongue who attend weekly is much higher than those who don't attend weekly, which makes sense as well. [00:49:43] Okay, last comment. I think here. I think it's the last one. 1964 is the last year of boomer demographic. Thank you. I knew it was around 65, something like that. So 1964, so the youngest boomer right now is 61 years old. And so they're already entering into retirement age. They're entering that. That general. That. That time. Their influence, I think 1945, you know, right after the war, is the first year, May 1946. And so that would be 80 years. So, you know, they're dying off. And God bless them. I hope they all go to heaven. I hope they all repent if they. If they've been. You know, they need to. And they all need to. And. And Jesus receives them. But the influence of the demographic as a whole has been abysmal and. And just catastrophic on the Catholic Church. Church. So their waning influence is already being seen as a real sign of hope for the future. So. Okay, I think I'm gonna cut it out there. Again, we have a lot of work to do. If only 13% of Catholics actually are practicing Catholics, that means we have a lot, a lot, a lot of work to do. But there are signs of hope that the work that good men and women have been doing for some time now is starting to fruition. The Holy Spirit is moving and. And people are actually younger people are embracing the fullness of the Catholic faith. Okay, everybody, until next time. God love you.