Catholic Leaders, Start Listening to Those Who Left Religion

A Pew study released in December found that 29 percent of Americans are not affiliated with any religion, up from 16 percent when Pew first asked the question in 2007. (The number of people in the United States who self-identify as Catholic has held steady at 21 percent.) But there is not merely a shift in how people express religion publicly. The outlook for personal spirituality is similarly bleak. According to Pew, almost a third of U.S. adults report that they pray rarely or not at all, up from 18 percent in 2007.