Why Some Stay, Why Others Leave

Research shows relationships have more effect than doctrine

JOHN R. THROOPJohn Throop is associate rector of Christ Episcopal Church, Shaker Heights, Ohio. He is the author of Shape Up from the Inside Out (Tyndale House, 1986).

I can’t point to a particular moment when decided to leave the Roman Catholic church. No specific incident angered me; no key doctrine influenced me. But during my first year of college, became aware that I could no longer call the Roman Catholic church my home.

I do not regret leaving the Roman church, although the decision was tough on my family relationships. My home was shaped by the staunch Irish Roman Catholic faith of my mother and her forebears. My grandmother used to tell stories about her grandfather who suffered for his Catholic faith in nineteenth-century Ireland. “Your great-great-grandfather used to have to climb into the trees to pray,” she said. “He would have been put in prison for receiving his Communion.” We never told my grandmother that I had “left the church.” That would have hurt too much.

Friends And Relations

Not every Catholic who comes to a personal faith decides to leave the church. But research shows some interesting patterns surrounding both those who make a conscious decision to stay in and those who choose to leave the church.

According to Dean Hoge, a sociologist at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., relational rather than doctrinal reasons are behind many of the decisions. There is no clear statistical information on the number who leave the Roman church. But in a study he did for the Roman Catholic Bishops’ Commission on Evangelization (see “Which Way Did They Go?” p. 33), Hoge found that the great majority of those who join the Catholic church or leave it do so because of interfaith marriages.

Formerly, large numbers of converts to Catholicism came from the pool of non-Catholic spouses. “The number of converts to Roman Catholicism has exhibited a downward trend over the past twenty years,” says Hoge, showing that “people are making a variety of decisions … about how they handle interfaith marriages.”

Hoge found that, in addition to interfaith marriage, other relational factors influencing individuals to stay in or leave the church included the breakup of close personal relationships (marriage, romance, family), employment changes and new associates who are non-Catholic, and new friendships where the importance of the religious quest is shared.

Peter Wagner, professor of church growth at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, agrees with Hoge’s findings. His own research shows that the decision to leave or stay in the Roman Catholic church is based much more often on relational than on doctrinal bases. (Church-growth research shows that Protestants make these decisions in much the same ways.) Says Wagner, “One can see the relational factor so strongly in two ways. First are the many Roman Catholic families (or even entire parishes) that are ethnically or culturally rooted. The kinship ties to the social group are much more important to these people than specific doctrinal issues.

“Second are those Roman Catholics who are part of the American mainstream. Many of them are like those in Protestant denominations where there is diminishing denominational loyalty. So, when they move, they look first for a church that meets their needs.

“In both cases, the relational element for staying in the church or leaving it is the determining factor.”

The influence of new friendships is especially strong among those age 22 and under. For example, in my first year of college, I struck up a friendship with a young man who subsequently became my roommate. He shared his faith with me and invited me to read Scripture with him. As I read Scripture for the first time, the truth of the Word spoke deeply to me. But the growing friendship I had with my roommate helped the Word to be living and active—because he lived it out. Only later did I begin to assess doctrinal differences. I never had a friendship in the Roman Catholic church in which faith was a strong element. No one outside my family had ever shared his faith with me. Mine was a relational, not a doctrinal, crisis.

Committed Catholics

But not every Roman Catholic has had my experience. Others have known a community of faith in the Roman church and, after coming to Christ, decided to stay. Kevin Perrotta, a member of the interfaith Word of God Community in Ann Arbor, Michigan, insists that “the importance of personal faith and appropriation is genuinely part of the Roman Catholic tradition as well as the Protestant tradition. The great Catholic Reformers have always pointed to personal appropriation as a vital element of faith.” In the Roman church, then, as Perrotta sees it, faith is personal and relational.

A lifelong Catholic, Perrotta drifted away from his childhood faith during his college years. But he had a conversion experience influenced by deeply faithful Roman Catholics. “I found that they had a personal witness that I couldn’t deny—a love and peace in their hearts that were real. So I returned to the Lord from my agnosticism.” Like many in the late twentieth century, he sought a strong community where he could be at home with God and with himself. “I dropped in on the community just for a visit. I got there and found something more—I ran into the Lord himself.” Perrotta is committed to staying in the Roman church. “I have found the Lord here,” he says simply.

Many choose to stay in the Roman church because they have found God there. And many choose to stay precisely because the church is striving to become more relational and less authoritarian. It also seeks to communicate more effectively. Thus baby-boom Roman Catholics who have dropped out of the church are now returning.

The Roman Catholic laity has also increasingly become grounded in and knowledgeable about the Scriptures. Bert Ghezzi, a lifelong Catholic and editorial director at Strang Communications, a charismatic Christian publisher, highlights the Catholic hunger for the Word and the community: “Popular movements are bringing Catholics to personal commitment to Christ and to personal application of Scripture.”

The popular attention to Scripture and the expectation of better homilies from priests are evidence of a renewal in the Catholic church that encourages many to stay. The rapid increase in the number of home Bible studies, personal retreats, charismatic prayer groups, and parish renewal weekends all point to a thorough effort on the part of the clerical and lay leaders to help faith be more relational, relevant, and responsive to the needs of parishioners. In turn, the bonds of community are strengthened, the very thing that helps to retain Roman Catholics. As believers mature, however, doctrinal issues do have to be addressed.

Ghezzi, who studied Reformation historiography while earning his Ph.D. in European history, chose to remain in the Roman Catholic church after a profound charismatic experience and after dedicating his life to the Lord. “I was asked, ‘When are you going to leave the Roman Catholic church?’ ” Ghezzi recalls. “I had many invitations from the Pentecostals. I was shocked! It never occurred to me that I should leave. I wanted to help other Roman Catholics to share my experience and joy. I thought that what I was doing was completely compatible with what I had learned as a Catholic.”

Doctrinal Departures

Bartholomew F. Brewer, executive director of Mission to the Catholics, a San Diego—based evangelistic organization, sees the matter differently. A former Roman Catholic priest, Brewer was convinced by the Scriptures that he could not remain in the church. He left nearly 25 years ago and now speaks widely to conservative Protestant groups around the country on how to witness effectively to Roman Catholics. The purpose of his ministry is to “respectfully disturb Catholic people with the gospel.”

According to Brewer, a person who has had an authentic born-again experience has no choice but to leave the Roman church: “A Catholic, if he is to be true to his beliefs, finds that the bottom line is an implicit obedience to the pope, not to the Scriptures.” An evangelical convert cannot last long in the church. He would have to leave because of this conflict over authority—the authority of the church versus the authority of the Scriptures. “Anyway,” says Brewer, “the born-again believer may not be tolerated very long in the parish. He’s a threat.”

Brewer himself left the Roman Catholic church for doctrinal (not relational) reasons. “As I read the Scriptures, I started to question two major Catholic teachings,” he recalls, “mandatory celibacy for priests and auricular [private] confession. I began to see that these two issues had no warrant in Scripture.” Then, like Luther, he discovered the doctrine of justification by faith through grace. “That’s when I became a biblical Christian, when I was born again,” he says, “and when I left the Roman Catholic church.”

Although a major portion of those participating in Hoge’s study stated that they left because they were generally dissatisfied with the Catholic church or its teachings, the number who cited specific doctrines or practices was small (only 14% of those age 23 and over; a negligible portion of the younger group). Even here their quarrel was not theological but experiential, citing inadequate Bible study, lack of relevance, and boring sermons. Other factors cited included finding spiritual help or religious counsel elsewhere (17% of the younger group; 18% of the older group); and having a personal conversion experience that led them out (16% of the younger group; 13% of the older group).

Ghezzi has met few Catholics who seek to leave the church over doctrinal issues. “I want to know if a person has been influenced by mistaken, misinformed, or ignorant views of the Roman Catholic church,” he says, “especially if they’re ignorant of developments in the church since Vatican II. I want them to consider rationally what the church actually teaches. I want them to consider biblical and evangelical bases in the church.” If the person still chooses to leave, says Ghezzi, then “they have thought through the matter, and the Lord may be leading them out.”

Nathan Hatch, a leading Protestant historian and associate dean of the College of Arts and Letters at the University of Notre Dame, recognizes that the relational element of faith is important, but says doctrine must not be given short shrift. “Some Catholics are more evangelical than I am, in the sense that they readily share their faith in Christ as Lord,” he says. “But to be evangelical in the more European sense means that you have to deal with the doctrine of justification. If you understand that the church is sacramental, that sacraments mediate saving grace and that the church is the repository of grace—that it is found in no other way—then it is impossible to be classically evangelical.”

The differences in doctrinal approach are important, he says. But Protestants must remember that Catholics are Christian, and some Catholics who have been reborn in the Spirit choose to stay.

Roots

In places where cultural Catholicism remains vital, the Roman Catholic church is experiencing a surge of returnees, mostly men and women under 40 who had dropped out for a while, but had not been attracted to another church body.

In a front-page article in the New York Times (July 27, 1986), Joseph Berger reported on one parish experiencing this phenomenon: Saint James Cathedral in Brooklyn has more than quadrupled in size, due almost exclusively to the influx of younger families, many of them returnees. These families find a strong sense of community, a transcendent worship experience, spiritual immediacy for their daily lives, and, perhaps most important, a sense of the familiar, of coming home.

In turn, the parish leadership strives to reflect a new kind of Catholicism, which seeks to relate to parishioners where they are. There is little sign of authoritarian teaching and moral strictures. Instead, congregants think for themselves as they hear God’s Word and worship together. According to Berger, doctrine was not a major issue for these returnees. They were hungry for relationship—with each other and with Christ. This parish sought to meet the need.

Notre Dame’s Hatch comments on the strength of religious roots: “A weakness of evangelicalism is that we believe one can too readily break roots and ties by a sheer act of will. A Catholic—or anyone considering leaving his or her religious background for another—must consider the repercussions.” Each person has a unique religious history, says Hatch, and the inquirer must come to terms with it. “You don’t cut those roots without some cost.”

For me, leaving the Catholic church meant alienation from my family for several years. I could not explain the change and my conversion in doctrinal terms. Even when I began to find some clear distinctions, they did not contribute to reconciliation. And because I saw my own family’s faith as deep and authentic, I chose not to mount a crusade to “convert” them from the Lord they already knew. Some time later, after my parents experienced a personal spiritual renewal, and after I had increased in maturity, reconciliation did come. Then we were able to accept the integrity of each other’s Christian faith. We served the same Lord, but from different points of view.

Catholics Like Me

I still have points of difference with Roman Catholic teaching and practice. I cannot accept an equal pairing of the authority of Scripture and of tradition. But there are Catholics who, like me, stress the primacy of the authority of Scripture. I cannot accept the veneration of Mary. But some Catholics can’t, either. I cannot accept a doctrine of ministry that promotes priestly celibacy or exalted clerical hierarchy. But a lot of Catholics I know feel the same way. I believe that each person must come to a personal, saving faith in Christ. Some Catholic colleagues of mine believe that with equal passion. They stayed. I left.

In most cases, relationship is indeed a stronger factor than doctrine in decisions about staying or leaving. And doctrine, so important to leaders in Catholic and Protestant circles, may be mere Monday-morning quarterbacking for the average Catholic who is making a decision about his church. It is most often the presence of a believing person at a key moment in a person’s spiritual search that makes the difference. “Evangelization is matchmaking,” Hoge told the bishops in his report. For me, that was true. My Protestant roommate opened the door for me to leave. Had he been Catholic, my story might well have been different.

Which Way Did They Go?

In researching their book, Converts, Dropouts, Returnees: A Study of Religious Change among Catholics (Pilgrim, 1981), Dean Hoge’s survey team found some interesting patterns:

• Did taking part in a mainline Protestant group facilitate decisions to leave? No dropouts who were 22 and younger, and only 3 percent of those 23 and older said yes. But participation in a fundamentalist, Baptist, Mormon, or Pentecostal group influenced 13 percent of the younger dropouts and 15 percent of the older ones.

• Objection to Catholic moral teachings was the most frequent predisposition to dropping out among those 23 and older (26%). Writes Hoge, “For most people, moral teachings are more consequential than doctrinal teachings.… The battlegrounds are birth control, abortion, sexual freedom, divorce, and sex roles.” Among younger dropouts the most frequent predisposition was “tension in parental family” (52%).

• Just under half of all inactive Catholics cited a personal relationship that facilitated their decision to drop out.

• Twenty percent of the 22-and-under group are now in non-Catholic religious groups—a large variety of Protestant denominations (and in one case Judaism). Nearly the same proportion of older dropouts (19%) are active in other religious groups, but there is a trend: most are in Pentecostal, Assemblies of God, Baptist, or nondenominational churches. Only 3 percent are in mainline denominations.

• Neither personal influence nor theological argument is generally effective in wooing a person away from the Roman Catholic church. By and large such efforts succeed “only when the personal ties of a Catholic young person to family and parish are already weak for other reasons.”

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