While in the past, Catholics maintained their loyalty to the Catholic Church, this can no longer be presumed especially among young adult Catholics. In American Catholics Today, William D’Antonio, James Davidson, Dean Hoge and Mary Gautier show that Catholic identity is not as strong among younger Catholics as it is among older Catholics. For example, 56% of respondents under 40 years of age said, “I could be just as happy in some other church,” compared with 37 percent of respondents aged 63 or older.

Those who pine for the good old days in the Catholic Church don’t recognize that those good old days were flawed. The fact that over a third of elderly Catholics say they could be just as happy in some other church shows that, for many, Catholic loyalty was based on family pressure, ethnic neighborhoods and lack of competition rather than personal commitment.

What happened to Catholics?

After World War II, many American Catholics became educated, got better jobs and moved out of their ghettos and into the suburbs. They worked and lived with non-Catholics, and discovered they did not have horns. Prejudices on both sides decreased, friendship increased and many fell in love and got married. Vatican II ratified this experience with its stress on ecumenism. While in the past, Catholics would rarely adopt the faith of their non-Catholic spouse, today about half do. The weaker partner follows the partner with the stronger faith.

The ecumenical movement encouraged us to stress our similarities with other Christians, for example, our common baptism and Scriptures. Although Catholic biblical scholarship is now flourishing, its suppression by an overanxious hierarchy early in the 20th century left ordinary Catholics uneducated and ill prepared to enter into conversations with Protestants about the Scriptures.

After Vatican II, Catholics saw fewer things that made them unique. For too many Catholics, Catholicism became identified with an authoritarian hierarchy and prohibitions on birth control, divorce and women priests. The hierarchy argued that it had the truth and the faithful should follow. This did not satisfy an educated people who wanted to be convinced with arguments not by references to authority.

Too much of church teaching was irrelevant to peoples’ experience because it was expressed in terms from medieval philosophy and theology that was incomprehensible to contemporary people. Theologians, who were the source of creative ideas at the Second Vatican Council, attempted after the council to express the faith in contemporary ways, but they were often attacked and silenced by the hierarchy. This led to a debilitating alienation of theologians from the hierarchy. A secular comparison would be to see the church as a company where the management and research division were not on speaking terms. Would you invest in such a company?

In support of Catholic uniqueness, church officials stress the importance of the sacraments that many Protestant churches did not have. While the liturgy was translated into English, not enough was done to make it connect with the people. Liturgical experimentation was forbidden, and as a result, new forms were not developed that would work with contemporary young adults. Most Protestant services are more interesting and moving than Catholic services.

Catholic clergy had been spoiled with monopolistic influence over a captive audience. Today, it is a whole new ball game. People no longer come to church or stick with their religion out of a fear of damnation.

For many people, religion is just another consumer product with limited brand loyalty. Sunday is no longer a day of rest. Church services must compete with jobs, shopping, sports, TV and other entertainments. The old days will not return. New ways to proclaim the Gospel, foster Christian community and build the kingdom of God must be discovered and tried. Churches that are closed to creativity and do not listen to the Spirit breathing in their congregations will die. Repeating the same answers in a louder voice will convince no one.