Pew Forum: Changes in US religious preferences affect Catholic Church the most

Folks, the ever-perceptive people at the Pew Forum released the results of another survey measuring the changes in religious attitudes among Americans. The report is titled Faith in Flux: Changes in Religious Affiliation in the U.S. and may be found here. You may read their methodology here. Respondents were allowed to supply more than one answers to the same question so if you add the percentages and these exceed 100%, that's the reason.

These are the main findings relevant to the Catholic Church. I rounded-up percentages and numerical descriptors so these should be understood as closest approximations. Errors and/or imprecisions are mine and not the Pew Forum's:

Catholicism has suffered the greatest net loss in the process of religious change

One-in-ten American adults is a former Catholic

The number of ex-Catholics, unaffiliated, and converts to Protestantism are about even

Two thirds of ex-Catholics who left the Church - whether to Protestantism or to no church - did so because they stopped believing in Catholic teachings

50% of ex-Catholics converts to Protestantism left the Church because they rejected Catholic teachings

60% of ex-Catholics left because of Church teaching on abortion and homosex

50% of ex-Catholics left because of Church teaching on birth control

50% of ex-Catholics left because of Church's treatment of women

55% of ex-Catholics who became Evangelical Protestants left because they dislike the Church's teaching on the Bible

44% of now Protestant ex-Catholics also left because they married a non-Catholic

39% of now Protestant ex-Catholics also left because they were dissatisfied with their parish priests

Fewer than 3-in-ten of ex-Catholics say clergy sexual abuse scandal a reason to leave the Church

There's much to ponder here. I offer the following personal thoughts on these results:

Most of those who left the Church did so because of dissent with the Church's moral teaching, particularly on abortion and human sexuality.

I will mourn the departure of these Catholics who left for doctrinal dissent, but in the end, it's their loss.

Those who left and didn't join a Protestant community didn't flock to the Episcopal Church, where they could find a near-Catholic liturgy and complete commitment to no particular set of moral imperatives, so what they sought wasn't a traditional setting of Christian worship, belief, and practice, but a setting that confirmed their own autonomous morality or no setting at all.

Were I to have the power - and I don't, and I don't believe anyone does - I would not change a single iota or tilde of the Church's Moral Teaching to accomodate those who left for these reasons. I am sorry, but good bye. The door is open for your return home.

Now, on the other sound of the exodus from the Catholic Church, I think:

That we in the Church should present the Bible as guide for living, as much as a prayer book and a doctrinal textbook. Our Protestant brethren have learned to do this very well and we should learn to do the same within the Catholic framework of faith and practice.

The lay faithful, now more than ever, should learn to see priests, deacons, and religious as men and women also struggling for their salvation and not as accomplished superheroes. They too have imperfections and these cannot be used as an excuse to leave the Church.

Priests, deacons, and religious should be more spiritual and better attuned to their flock's needs; their flock's expectations of them are high but fragile, and very easy to betray.

Protestant churches fill significant spiritual voids that we Catholics have failed to fill in those who left us, particularly in the area of support and fellowship. That's our fault and we have no one else to blame but ourselves.

That's about it. What do you think?