PHILIPPINES
Inquirer
By TJ Burgonio
Philippine Daily Inquirer
1:22 am | Friday, April 12th, 2013
Some are turned off by boring homilies and “second collections.” News of scandals involving priests also bothers them. But most are “distracted” by a lot of things.
Activist priest Fr. Robert Reyes and Msgr. Sabino Vengco offered these explanations to survey results showing “dwindling” numbers of Filipino Catholics hearing Mass over the past two decades.
A Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey in February found that only 37 percent of Catholics were going to church, a huge decline from 64 percent in 1991.
The survey also found that 9.2 percent of Filipino Catholics were considering leaving the Church.
“We’re hemorrhaging. It’s not massive blood loss but there’s blood loss. I see it; I experience it. The parishioners are losing faith, passion and interest in the Catholic Church. There’s something lacking that they can’t put their fingers on,” Reyes said by phone.
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