Description

The Catholic Church is not dying out – far from it. Many will argue that this claim directly contradicts the numbers. The data shows that Mass attendance has fallen steeply over the past decades; fewer people are receiving all the sacraments; fewer people believe. Nonetheless, After Secularisation: The Present and Future of British Catholicism gives both principled and statistical reasons for hope and good cheer regarding the future of the Church in Britain.

Building on prior work, Stephen Bullivant (Mass Exodus: Catholic Disaffiliation in Britain and America Since Vatican II; Vatican II: A Very Short Introduction), Hannah Vaughan-Spruce (Why Catholics Leave, What They Miss, and How They Might Return; Handbook for Catechists) and Bernadette Durcan (Why Catholics Leave, What They Miss, and How They Might Return), examine where "creative minorities" (cf. Ratzinger) can currently be found within the life of the Catholic Church in England, Wales, and Scotland, specifically in groupings (parishes or otherwise, lay or clergy) that contain committed, Mass-going young adults. The strong attachment to and observance of the Catholic faith displayed by young adults in certain distinct settings seem to offer signs of hope and renewal against an otherwise worrying backdrop of declining congregations, closing parishes, and cradle Catholics abandoning their religion in large numbers.

The fervour that Bullivant et al. uncover is starting to seep into the statistics. These numbers might not predict a wholesale revival of Christian society, but the future of the Church in Britain looks devoted, faithful, passionate, and very real.