St. Louis Has Fewer Catholics but Does That Signal Decline?

St. Louis Public Radio
July 1, 2014

http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/st-louis-has-fewer-catholics-does-signal-decline

Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis

Institutional religions are losing members to those who claim to be “unaffiliated,” people who are often religious or spiritual in some way but don’t belong to an institution. Nearly one in five of U.S. adults are “unaffiliated” according to the Pew Research Center.

Pew experts say Catholicism is taking the biggest hit with this movement. While nearly one in three Americans were raised Catholic, today fewer than one-in-four describe themselves that way.

This trend isn’t just national. Cliff Grammich, research associate for the Glenmary Research Center, says the decline can be seen in St. Louis.

“All together in the St. Louis metropolitan area we found about 555,000 persons associated with the Catholic Church in 2010, that was a decrease of about 100,000 from our previous study in the year 2000,” said Grammich.

However, Grammich added that the Catholic Church was one of several institutional churches that lost members in St. Louis, perhaps because of the “unaffiliated” trend.

Father Chris Collins, assistant professor of systematic theology at Saint Louis University, says the Catholic Church isn’t losing people entirely; people just shift over time.

“It is not necessarily loss, it is shifting around from one denomination to another … in part it is an American phenomenon,” said Collins.

Fr. Collins says the melting pot of religions in America makes it easy to switch religious affiliations but thinks people are no less spiritual. Collins maintains over the long haul Catholics have not been declining.

“The percentage of Catholics, as a percentage of the American population, has stayed the same for about 30 years, about 25 percent,” said Collins.

Grammich agreed it’s possible Catholics may not be in overall decline across the U.S., and added Catholics in St. Louis are seeing “a little more loss than has been incurring nationwide.”