Trenton Diocese Poll Seeks 'Sheep' Who've Strayed
By Erin Duffy
Pamela Thoresen first left the Catholic Church in the early '90s, when she was still living in California. Asked to sign her name to a prewritten statement opposing a right-to-die voter referendum after listening to a long recording by Pope John Paul II on the sanctity of life, Thoresen felt her personal opinions weren't welcome or appreciated. "The Church uses the term 'flock' for its members, and it isn't just a euphemism — they treat their congregants, in my opinion, like sheep," she said. Thoresen tried joining the church again after moving to Hamilton years later, but the church's views on homosexuality, birth control and the role of women in the ministry turned her off once again. "The Church is entrenched and will never change and I can't give money to, or accept a blessing from, an organization who talks the talk of love and compassion, but not only doesn't walk the walk, but doesn't know the steps and can't hear the music," she wrote in an e-mail. Like Thoresen, more and more Catholics are opting to simply stay home on Sundays instead of attending Mass. But why? Local church officials trying to answer that question deployed an "Empty Pews" survey last year to ask Catholics in the Diocese of Trenton to explain why they had left the Church or stopped going to Mass. Conducted by Villanova University's Center for the Study of Church Management, the survey asked lapsed Catholics 16 questions about their experiences in their parish and what caused them to break from the church. The answers are far from clear-cut. Some respondents said they simply drifted away from their parish. Others, like Thoresen, took issue with what they see as the overly political nature of the Church and its stance on issues like birth control, gay marriage and especially — divorce and remarriage. "Eliminate the extreme conservative haranguing," one respondent wrote. Some survey respondents pointed fingers at church leadership, blaming the Church for its response to the clergy sex-abuse crisis and characterizing some pastors as haughty and unapproachable, "with a holier-than-thou bearing." In one of the most striking responses, one woman said a priest refused to attend her 9-year-old son's burial because it wasn't at a Catholic cemetery. Others tired of being preached to and asked for more dialogue between priest and parishioner. "Ask a question of any priest and you get a rule; you don't get a 'let's-sit-down-and-talk-about-it' response," one survey respondent said. On March 22, the survey findings were summed up in a report presented by study authors Charles Zech, the director at the Villanova center, and the Rev. William Byron, professor of business and society at Philadelphia's St. Joseph's University, at a "Lapsed Catholics" conference at The Catholic University of America. The study drew responses from 298 Catholics — mostly white, middle-aged women — and was commissioned by Bishop David O'Connell of the Diocese of Trenton last year after he read an article Byron had written for America Magazine called "On Their Way Out: What exit interviews could teach us about lapsed Catholics." One-quarter of respondents said they still considered themselves Catholics despite leaving their parish, and many had positive things to say about their parish and clergy. In e-mails to the National Catholic Reporter, an independent weekly newspaper, O'Connell said he became alarmed when he took over the diocese in 2010 and discovered that only 25 percent of local Catholics were attending Mass regularly. A spokeswoman for O'Connell said the bishop was still digesting the report and couldn't comment on it yet, but hoped its results would help the diocese devise new ways to woo disaffected Catholics back. Low church attendance figures aren't limited to the Diocese of Trenton. A Georgetown University study last year estimated that only 22 percent of Catholics regularly attend Sunday Mass. Zech said some shifts in Mass attendance are cultural: People are busier than ever and might not make time for church. And parish consolidations and closings leave some parishioners yearning for the tight-knit parishes of the past. "We have to understand (priests) can't be as close to their flock as many would like to be," Zech said. "It doesn't excuse them from some of the things we've heard about, but it does maybe explain it." The Church isn't likely to change its stance on such issues as birth control or celibacy anytime soon, Zech said, but dioceses can change the way they explain certain doctrines and train pastors to be more approachable. "They have to do a better job of teaching, not just stating rules," he said. "(Churches) must do a better job making sure priests are better homilists, do a better job of reminding priests and parish staff that they're shepherds and have to do a better job relating to people." Two other diocese have already approached Zech and Byron about conducting similar studies, showing that the concern over lapsed Catholics goes beyond the borders of the Diocese of Trenton. O'Connell seems to be taking the report seriously, Zech said, and he has promised to personally respond to survey-takers who included a name and number and indicated they'd like a member of the diocese to reach out. "They're not lost to the Church forever," Zech said. "These are folks that I think, with the right response, could be brought back."
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