Originally published at crisis magazine
Recently, Eric Sammons shared the grim results of a Pew Survey on religion in America. The survey found that only 19 percent of Americans self-identify as Catholic, a 20 percent decrease from the 24 percent who did so in 2007. For every 100 people who enter the Catholic Church, 840 depart it. To make matters worse, only 29 percent of those self-identifying Catholics actually attend Mass weekly. Meanwhile, the number of religious “nones” in the United States has ballooned by 81 percent—many of them former Catholics.
Sammons goes on to ask why we are seeing this depressing decline in the United States and how we can combat it. He observes that “Catholics need to consider a complete overhaul in how the Church currently operates. Absolutely nothing should be off the table, except those things that are of divine origin.” While noting that there’s no single silver bullet that will resolve the problem, Sammons does offer some sound proposals for ways to reverse the collapse, including making the Traditional Latin Mass more widely available, halting interreligious activities, and returning to the use of the Baltimore Catechism.
I’d like to offer an additional suggestion—perhaps the closest thing to a silver bullet that
