By any normal statistical measure the Church in the United States is “in decline.” Whether statistical measures are as valuable as some of us seem to think, whether they provide us with an exhaustive understanding of a given problem, whether they can sometimes blind us to other equally meaningful considerations which they are by definition unable to capture—all of these questions are beyond the scope of this essay.
This is because I am not actually concerned here with statistics as such, but with the reality of which they provide a (no doubt hopelessly limited and inadequate) picture. Thus, when I remind readers that there are fewer people attending Mass than there were half a decade ago and that there is every reason to believe that in 2030 there will be fewer still, or that in many dioceses priestly ordinations have failed to pick up, I am not suggesting that simply increasing the numbers is in itself a solution to the problem.
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