THE “distinctiveness” that, 50 years ago, was a source of embarrassment to Roman Catholics is drawing young people to the Church and keeping their faith alive, a latest book argues.
In a post-modern culture characterised by the seek for identity, belonging, and meaning, it’s “strong religious subcultures” that can often draw young people into the fold, argues the book After Secularisation by Stephen Bullivant, Hannah Vaughan-Spruce, and Bernadette Durcan, published by the Catholic Truth Society.
When it involves the parish, the book observes a “growing trend of individuals selecting which parish to attend based on reasons aside from pure geography. . . The cultural importance of individual alternative and authenticity within the post-Christian era has made an indelible impact on the practice of Catholicism.”
Growing parishes understand this, the book suggests. Instead of operating as “generalist organisations aiming to serve all in a heterogeneous market” (a quotation attributed to the sociologist Tricia Bruce), they understand the appeal of “distinctiveness”, offering a “strong religious subculture”. They are also expert at adopting an “outside mentality” — able to think about what it’s prefer to approach as a newcomer — and at recognising the will for community. Young newcomers featured within the book “entwine their social and cultural lives into the parish”.
The book draws on a 2019 survey of British RCs to attract comparisons across the generations. Among the findings was that 41 per cent of the 18- to 24-year-olds surveyed reported attending mass weekly, compared with just 17 per cent of 55- to 64-year-olds. Almost two-thirds of this youngest cohort said that they “definitely” or “probably” believed within the Real Presence, compared with 41 per cent of the older age group.
“Younger Catholics have, due to relentless secularisation, been raised in a much less religious world,” it says. “In order to still be ‘ticking the Catholic box’ . . . younger adults are necessarily more more likely to mean something by it. . . Their very commitedness is, in large measure, a side-effect of, and response to, their highly secularised environment.”
Chapters on youth movements and university chaplaincies explore what happens when these “deviantly religious” young people get together. The accounts shared by young people were “awash with references to experiences of the supernatural”, the authors report. At the center of the Youth 2000 events is a “Eucharistic healing retreat”. More generously resourcing these ministries could, the authors argue, “radically re-route the present trajectory”.
Professor Bullivant, director of the Benedict XVI Centre for Religion and Society, at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, said that, while it was necessary to avoid caricatures, generational tensions could result from the keenness of younger RCs, who were “palpably more traditional and theologically conservative” than older clergy and congregations.
“Liturgically, they are going to wish to do things that can horrify the parish stalwarts,” he said. “Younger Catholics are inclined to be far happier with kneeling for communion, for instance, girls wearing a Mantilla or lace veil. . . Even things just like the rosary or devotions to saints. You’ll have young adults getting married and following the church teaching on contraception which horrifies their moms, let alone their grandmothers.”
Younger clergy were also more conservative, he observed. The late Pope Francis, who once denounced the “scandal” of young priests and seminarians trying on fancy vestments in Roman shops, sometimes made these clergy the “pantomime villain”.
Among the brand new book’s recommendations is that “liturgical niches”, including “Latin Massers” (it estimates that, on any given Sunday, there are 3000 to 4000 British people attending mass within the Extraordinary Form), ought to be “actively encouraged and organised for, fairly than tolerated and accommodated”, in a “diverse ecosystem”.
More broadly, it argues that the “blanket, seamless provision of the Catholic ‘product’ across a complete geography” is an approach that not works for parishes. “‘Targeting the center’ . . . fails to satisfy real spiritual need.”
Dr Bullivant said: “Everyone rightly hates talking about Church as if it was a managerial corporate thing, and we now have a product that we try to shift a product consumers. The whole point about metaphors in religion is that you simply are usually not meant to confuse them with the thing you’re actually talking about.”
He defended, nonetheless, the necessity for “creativity and zeal”, observing that “pockets of super-committed people” or “gathered area of interest communities” offered mutual encouragement while generating vitality within the Church through a “spillover” effect.
Asked whether the zeal of a “committed core” could prove off-putting to a big fringe of more nominal Christians, Dr Bullivant said: “The only thing that’s ever going to create more cultural Christians is lively Christianity. . . Where baseline Christianity may be very low you will find disproportionate strength in additional stronger culturally weird camps. . . Catering to the center of a middle that’s becoming less and fewer Christian on a regular basis shrinks and shrinks and shrinks.”
After Secularism emphasises that decline continues. Mass attendance on a typical Sunday fell from almost two million in 1980 to 592,000 in 2022. In 2019, just before the pandemic, it stood at 829,000.
But the book predicts that decline will “bottom out” and “at the least to a point, reverse” in the approaching many years.” It contends that “how well-equipped the Church is to bounce back” will largely rely on how well it “recognises, resources, learns from, and leans into” the “sectors of resistance” explored in its chapters.
These include the “significantly under-appreciated” impact of diaspora communities, and the ministries which have grown as much as serve them. Among the gatherings studied are the monthly conventions held by Anointing Fire Catholic Ministries — a movement throughout the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church — which commonly gather between 2000 and 3000 people at a conference centre within the West Midlands.
Fr Stephen Langridge, parish priest of St Elizabeth of Portugal RC Church, Richmond, in south-west London, is as a result of speak at “Springtime for the Church of England: Where are we seeing growth?”, a Church Times event on 31 January.
Book tickets here: churchtimes.co.uk/springtime-for-the-church-of-england-where-are-we-seeing-growth
