Catholic Mass Attendance Has Fallen by Half

Is Politics to Blame?

I was born and raised Southern Baptist. Gave my life to Jesus at 15. Got baptized in a pair of white pajamas. Then, I went to a Free Methodist college. Got a job at an American Baptist Church and have been serving in the ABCUSA for more than twenty years. I will be elected to the Board of General Ministries for American Baptist denomination this summer.

My wife is Irish Catholic. We got married in St. Teresa of Avila in our hometown. My very Southern Baptist grandmother went to her grave not knowing that piece of information.

Both my boys have been raised in the Catholic church. They were baptized as infants, and both have had their First Communions. They go to PSR classes nearly every Sunday morning before coming to worship at my church. And our sons attend Wednesday night youth group at the local United Methodist Church.

We wanted them to be part of a religious community. They are active in three. I hope that one of those sticks.

I try to get to Mass with my family a few times a year. Usually on Holy Days of Obligation, and other important days like Ash Wednesday. I really do like a lot of aspects of the Catholic Church. They certainly have better architecture than the average non-denominational Protestant building. Plus, I don’t have to do anything when I go to Mass. I can just sit there and meditate on the scriptures and get lost in the rituals.

I think one of the reasons I like going to Mass is that it gives me something to compare my own church to. We worship the same God, are saved by the same Jesus, and read (mostly) the same Bible.

From a data standpoint, however, there’s a lot going on in the Catholic Church that’s worth unpacking.

But before we dig into that - let’s just start as broad as we can: What share of Americans identify as Catholic and has that changed over time?

The General Social Survey has been asking about religious affiliation for nearly five decades. Same question, basically the same response options. The results are pretty boring, to be honest. Between 1972 and 1990, the share of Americans who identify as Catholic did not budge - 26%. From 1990 through 2010, it barely shifted as well - maybe dropping a single percentage point.

But, from 2010 through 2021, the trend line begins to move. It’s pretty evident that the Catholic share has dropped below 25%. However, it’s hard to pinpoint the exact percentage. In both 2016 and 2018, the number was 23% and in 2021 it dropped to 21%. But that last figure may be impacted by a methodological issue that I discuss at length here.

Overall, though, that’s a pretty solid result. I’ve shared this graph in a few talks that I have given with Catholics in the audience, and they seem fairly pleased with this result. I mean, I don’t blame them. Between 1972 and 2010, the Catholic share dropped by a single percentage point. Not bad.

However, that’s not the entire story with American Catholicism. Not even close. Lots of Americans still identify as Catholics but how many of them actually come to a Mass on a regular basis? That’s where the narrative about the Catholic Church in the United States starts to change.

I calculated the share of four Christian groups that report attending services nearly every week or more over the last fifty years. I love a graph like this one because the point I am trying to make becomes crystal clear in the visualization: Mass attendance for Catholics has fallen off a cliff.

In the early 1970s, about half of Catholics were weekly attenders. Today, it’s about 25%. And no, that’s not a result of the pandemic. Attendance was already down to 26% in 2018 - long before the world had ever heard the word “COVID-19.”

Note, also that the share of evangelicals who attend weekly has noticeably risen over the last fifty years (up at least a dozen percentage points). Weekly attendance for both Black and Mainline Protestants has stayed relatively stable, as well.

I think what is happening in the latter two cases, at least, is that people who marginally attended decades ago now no longer identify as Protestant. That means the denominator has gotten smaller and only the truly committed are left in the fold. It isn’t a resurgence, it’s probably more like a concentration.

The burning question here is: why have Catholics seen their attendance decline so precipitously? There could be a million and one reasons for Catholic churches to be emptying out, just like their Protestant cousins. But I wanted to focus on just one today: politics. I am a political scientist, after all.

I calculated weekly attendance rates among Catholics, but I broke it down by political partisanship. I was hoping to see some type of narrative emerge. It’s surprising to note that even through the mid-1990s, a Catholic Democrat was just as likely to attend weekly Mass as a Republican Catholic.

The clear partisan gap in Mass attendance only began to open up around the election of George W. Bush. But the divide was a small one: only three percentage points. It’s continued to widen from there, though. From about 2010 onward, a Republican Catholic is about six percentage points more likely to attend Mass nearly every week compared to a Catholic Democrat.

That’s not what I would call a huge divide. And if you don’t focus on the gap and instead look at the trend line - Mass attendance among Republicans has dropped from 55%+ to below 30% now. It’s not like conservatives are holding the line while liberal Catholics are jumping ship in huge numbers.

I wanted to take one more look at this, so I pulled up the Cooperative Election Study to test a working hypothesis. Maybe the devout White Catholics are becoming more Republican, while the ones who never darken the church doors are moving more toward the Democrats. I was surprised with the result, to say the least.

First, look at the right-hand side of the graph. Among weekly attending White Catholics, there is little to report. In 2008, 57% were Republicans. In 2022, it was 59%. Certainly, no big shift there - just a lot of stability over the last fourteen years.

Now, look at the never or seldom Mass attenders. This is where things get very interesting. In 2008 and 2012, it’s pretty clear that this group was a point of strength for the Democrats. However, between 2012 and 2016 some pretty tectonic shifts were underway. Instead of the distribution being +15 for the Democrats, it now becomes an even mix (around 42% for both parties).

From that point forward, the composition of low attending White Catholics continued to tilt to the right. Look at 2022 - it’s basically a mirror image of 2008. Democrats were 50% - Republicans were 35% in 2008. Now they are the exact opposite of that.

I am not one to write myself out of a job - but it’s pretty hard to make a causal argument that theology is what pushed low attending White Catholics toward the GOP - because they weren’t in the pews to hear those arguments from the priests and bishops.

For now I will leave you with this thought: shouldn’t White people who report their religious attendance as seldom or never have the same view of politics regardless of how they answer a question about religious identity? You can probably guess that a non-attending Catholic is a bit distinct from a non-attending agnostic. I will explore just how big that divide is in a future post.

Full code for this post can be found here.