The Morning After

In the wake of the ‘Catholic sixties’, the 1970s and 1980s were a period of uncertainty and crisis. Alongside other worrying trends—falling numbers of converts’ vocations, the departure of large numbers of clergy and religious, existential crises for many religious orders and other Catholic institutions—Mass attendance began falling and falling. As Paul VI put it in 1972, ‘It was believed that after the Council would come a sunny day in the history of the Church. Instead, a day of clouds, storms, gloom, searching, and uncertainty has arrived.’ Using new data, this chapter quantifies the declines in practice and affiliation among British and American Catholics. It also examines the related trends of ‘religious switching’ in the USA—fuelled by the advent of Evangelical megachurches from the mid-1970s onwards—and the mainstreaming of nonreligiosity in Britain.

Epilogue

Whether and to what extent the Second Vatican Council (either as a whole, or some particular aspect of its teaching and/or implementation) is to blame for the significant declines the Church has experienced in the decades following it is a question of significant dispute. The Epilogue to Mass Exodus addresses the question head on. It emphasizes the range of (non-Catholic-specific) social and cultural factors, discussed at length in earlier chapters, that have undoubtedly impacted upon Catholic retention. The notable declines witnesses by other major denominations over the same period, moreover, strongly suggest that Catholicism would also have suffered, even without the turbulence of Vatican II (and/or Humanae Vitae). Nevertheless, Vatican II cannot be absolved so easily. For a Council explicitly intended to read the signs of the times, to equip the Church to meet the challenges of the contemporary world, and indeed to make the Mass ‘pastorally efficacious to the fullest degree’, then it is very hard to escape that conclusion that, in Britain and America at least, it has failed to live up to its own expectations.

Gaudium et spes, luctus et angor

In 1965, Vatican II’s final document observed that ‘Profound and rapid changes are spreading by degrees around the whole world.’ Even by the mid-1960s, this assessment was hard to contradict—at the end of the decade, it would seem wildly understated. Put simply, a lot changed in the ‘turbulent sixties’—fashion, politics, popular music, social values, sexual mores. Within the Catholic Church, it would be more turbulent still. The euphoria unleashed by the Council precipitated a period of rapid and disorienting changes. Changes to the liturgy, devotional practices, the ordering and architecture of churches, and ecumenical relations were accompanied by the ‘abolition’ of Friday abstinence in 1966 and a crisis of disappointment and dissent in the wake of Humanae Vitae.

The Night Before

The late 1940s and 1950s are rightly regarded as a period of social upheaval and restructuring on both sides of Atlantic. The post-war Baby Boom, the GI Bill, the Cold War, suburbanization, growing prosperity, urban regeneration, social mobility, road building, and car and television ownership all form part of this story. These years are also often viewed in retrospect as a ‘boom time’ for mainstream religion: a time of growing devotion, church building, and—among Catholics particularly—growing self-confidence and social acceptance. Yet under the surface, cracks were beginning to form, with lapsation (or leakage) a source of growing anxiety. This chapter narrates the socio-religious history of this period, in light of three theoretical lenses: social network theory, plausibility structures, and Credibility Enhancing Displays (CREDs).

Unto the Third and Fourth Generations

In January 2002, the Boston Globe’s ‘Spotlight’ team began what would become a series of over 600 reports into sexual abuse and cover-up within the Catholic Church. The cumulative effect of ongoing revelations—reignited in 2018—on Catholic practice and retention is discussed here in light of empirical data and the theoretical idea of Credibility Undermining Displays (or CRUDs). Also covered in this chapter are issues relating to intergenerational transmission, the rise of the internet and social media, the rise of the ‘nones’, the phenomenon of ‘liminal nones’, and the chasm between traditional Christian moral teachings and contemporary social mores (especially in relation to LGBT issues).

Why They Say They Leave

The obvious way to discover why and how Catholics lapse or disaffiliate is simply to ask them. This chapter’s main aim, therefore, is to present and discuss the findings from the small number of qualitative studies that have done precisely that. These include Hoge et al.’s interviews with Catholic ‘dropouts’ in the late 1970s, and the more recent surveys of inactive or non-practising Catholics undertaken in two US dioceses (Trenton, NJ, and Springfield, IL), and one British diocese (Portsmouth). These studies probe the multivarious reasons why so many cradle Catholics have come, in later life, no longer to practise or—in many cases—even to identify as Catholics. They also shed rich new light on how ‘Catholic identity’ (and by extension, other religious identities) is understood in real life.

The Demographics of Disaffiliation

This chapter shows what light the quantitative sociology of religion can shed on Catholic disaffiliation. Drawing on recent data from high-quality survey programmes—the British Social Attitudes (BSA) and the General Social Survey (GSS)—it presents a detailed portrait of Catholic disaffiliates in Britain and America across a broad range of demographic indicators (region, age, sex, birth year, birth cohort, race, immigrant status). Illuminating comparisons are also drawn to the retention, disaffiliation, and conversion rates in other major British and American denominations (Lutheran, Anglican/Episcopalian, Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian). Among other important findings, these analyses provide a great deal of evidence for regarding the post-war Baby Boomers as a watershed generation with regard to the following decades’ steady declines in Catholic practice and identity.

Looking Foolish

Cardinal Newman famously quipped that the laity are those whom the Church would ‘look foolish’ without. This chapter explores the scope and nature of precisely this phenomenon: that is, the large and growing numbers of born-and-raised Catholics who, as adults, come no longer to identify as such. Far from being a problem exclusive to western Europe and North America, statistics from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) demonstrate such ‘disaffiliation’ to be a seriously overlooked pastoral reality in diverse countries from central Europe, Africa, Latin America, and Oceania. This chapter also probes the complexity of religious identity, and what it means for a person to change it, or lose it altogether.