Looking deeper into why young adults leave the Catholic Church

The statistic is astonishing: According to a recent Pew Research survey, there are six young adults leaving the Catholic Church for every person coming into the Catholic Church. Additional statistics may suggest that droves of young adults are leaving due to various issues. Regardless, the numbers should be concerning to anyone who calls themselves Catholic. Brandon Vogt found the numbers concerning when he wrote a book on how to persuade Catholics to return home.

According to the statistic I mentioned above, only two of the students I taught this year will remain Catholic. By the time their minds are corrupted with all the reasons why they should not remain Catholic, I can only hope that I’m planting a seed that inspires their faith to grow and continue. When we consider the reasons why people leave the church and—conversely—the reasons why they come back, it seems that we need to do a better job of planting the seeds. Granted, we could place the blame on pastors, priests, bishops, and other high-authority figures in the Church. Yet, the blame does not fall on them alone. The blame falls on each person who calls himself or herself a Catholic.

Yes, I am blaming myself for part of the problem. By every Catholic individually taking responsibility for his or her actions, we collectively can create more opportunities to "plant the seeds" of our faith. Talking about being Catholic or inviting someone to church goes a long way. More seeds are planted when we share the reasons behind our faith, and then we can start more conversations. The conversation is simple, as my students will tell you. By starting the conversation, we can open someone else’s mind to see other sides. The conversation is not just a priest’s responsibility, although he does get the ball rolling by giving the homily.

We place so much responsibility and accountability on our priests and pastors. We say they are the reason why we turn away from the Church, they are the reason why we choose a different community in which to pray, and they are the reason for all of our bad vices. It is easy to put all the blame on the priests and say they are the reason why people are leaving the church in droves. However, we do not give them the credit for bringing us back to Church. We do not want to give praise when praise is due. Instead, it is easier to knock these men down, in spite of everything priests do for us. We need to realize that blaming our parish priests is not the answer.

Our parish priests actually are struggling to find ways to connect with us. They struggle to find solutions to help stop the crisis of losing so many parishioners. They deal with their own personal issues. We assume they do not understand why people are leaving the Church. They do.

However, the solution is not only in their hands. It is in our hands as well. We are one, holy, catholic and apostolic church—we need to help these men find the solutions to bring back our young adults by taking responsibility ourselves.