Survey shows dissatisfaction 

Catholics who attend Mass as well as their lapsed brethren agree on some things, according to the results of a recently released survey of more than 1,400 current and former parishioners.

There is sentiment in both camps against people who run the church and what they have to say, say researchers from Benedictine University who conducted the study commissioned by the Springfield diocese.

“A perceived lack of Christian values at the level of the church, parish or priest” was one of four major reasons former churchgoers gave for leaving the church, researchers found.

“Some individuals felt judged in their congregation whereas others have had many friends leave the church due to unfriendly or unwelcoming experiences,” researchers wrote in the study released last week by the diocese, which commissioned the survey out of a concern over decreasing attendance at Mass for at least a decade.

Some active parishioners had similar feelings.

“Parish priests or pastors were the most frequently given responses for what parishioners liked least about their parish and for those considering separating from their parish, the Catholic church or both,” reported researchers who conducted an online survey of 827 practicing Catholics last spring.

Both active churchgoers and lapsed Catholics surveyed online between November of 2012 and March of 2013 told researchers they were troubled by church doctrine, including celibacy requirements for priests and bans on female priests, birth control, divorce, fertility treatments and homosexuality.

Bishop Thomas Paprocki declined an interview request, saying through a spokeswoman that he will reserve discussion of the survey results until a Nov. 24 forum at Benedictine University in Springfield, when the bishop will give an official response to the survey and take questions from the public. For now, Paprocki in a written statement said that the church should substitute the word “growth” for “evangelization” as the diocese seeks to deepen faith of parishioners while also increasing the number of active Catholics.

“If you are not growing, then you are stagnant or going backwards,” Paprocki said in a press release accompanying release of the survey.

The findings come as church membership has waned. Between 1996 and 2011, diocesan records show declines of as much as 30 percent in some parishes, researchers wrote. More than three-quarters of survey respondents who had left the church told researchers that they objected to church doctrine.

“My daughter came out to me as gay, and I went through divorce after 28 years of marriage,” one respondent wrote. “The church doesn’t want either one of us.”

More than 200 of the lapsed Catholics said that they didn’t feel connected to the church. Fifty-four percent of lapsed Catholics younger than 35 said there were too many church scandals, and that figure rose to 75 percent among respondents older than 50.

“I found the church to be teaching hate, not love,” one respondent wrote. “I felt like intolerance, and not tolerance, was being preached. I found that I disagreed with most of what was being preached. I left the church and I am still very spiritual, but I am simply not Catholic.”

Lapsed Catholics also said they didn’t want to hear about politics in church.

“I was tired of hearing I was a bad person for voting for a Democrat,” one respondent wrote. “I felt alienated every time I went to Mass.”

One-third of respondents who have left the church found pastors weren’t welcoming or approachable, and sermons got poor reviews.

“Most priests couldn’t give a good homily to save their life,” one respondent wrote. “Even the Gospel readings are done like a seventh-grader reading to class and not like an important lesson from the book of God.”

While 70 percent of practicing Catholics who were surveyed expressed satisfaction with priests and 177 said their priest is what they like most about church, there was also criticism. A quarter of those still active in the church who completed online surveys said they’d had a bad experience with someone in the church, and 116 said that it was with a priest.

“Parish pastors and priests were the most frequently given responses among inactive and active Catholics when asked about having a bad experience associated with anyone in the church and common critiques of the priests themselves included that priests were overworked and unavailable in parishioners’ times of need, lacked empathy and were not always welcoming in church,” researchers wrote.

Researchers noted limitations to the study, notably the use of online surveys to gauge sentiment, a methodology that has not been perfected. Participants may not have been representative of either lapsed or active Catholics, wrote researchers who could not explain why more than 900 former parishioners started the survey but did not complete it. By contrast, just two of the 829 active church members who started the survey failed to finish it.

Contact Bruce Rushton at [email protected].