As Bishop of the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois, I am grateful for this opportunity to offer my reflections on the results from the online surveys of active and inactive Catholics in Central Illinois conducted by researchers from Benedictine University in Lisle and published under the title, “Joy and Grievance in an American Diocese.” I am especially thankful to Dr. William Carroll, President of Benedictine University, for authorizing this study, and to Dr. Phillip Hardy of the Department of Political Science and Dr. Kelly Kandra and Dr. Brian Patterson of the Department of Psychology, Sociology and Criminal Justice, for gathering, analyzing and summarizing the survey responses from several hundred participants.
The scholarly analysis of the survey is helpful and important, but this study is not a mere academic exercise addressing some theoretical issue. The survey was prompted by a very real pastoral concern that I noted in our diocese’s 2011 “October Count,” which reported a 30 percent decline in attendance at weekend Mass over a fifteen year period since 1996. At the same time, some parishes in the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois experienced no change in attendance and others experienced an increase of as much as 82 percent. So some parishes were growing while others were diminishing in numbers.
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