By J.C. Miller, Crisis Magazine, July 16, 2025
J.C. Miller is an attorney and father of seven from Michigan. Follow him on X at www.x.com/JCMillerEsq/.
Survey after survey, Catholicism by the numbers continues a race towards the bottom. In order to reverse the trend, we need to understand why people leave.
We’ve all seen the headlines about America becoming a majority non-Christian country someday. Though we are encouraged by recent waves of conversion, we all know people who have lost their faith. We read that “while most Catholics have remained within the religious fold, a significant number have left the Catholic faith: 15 percent of the U.S. population says they were raised Catholic but no longer identify as such.” Professor Ryan Burge notes that Catholics have the worst “retention gap,” compared to other faith groups in America, among Gen Z: “For people born in 2000, 45% of them were raised Catholic. But only 28% still identify as Catholic.”
Understanding the reasons people give may help us to save souls. The stated reason for falling away may not be the real one, but something can still be drawn from the offered answers. Looking at multiple surveys from different sources at different times and in different countries can give us insight into the loss of faith or decline in Mass attendance—because the same issues keep coming up. …
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