By John Norton

Continuing conversation: Why Catholics leave

I've been inundated with responses to my column last week asking why -- as a new survey shows -- Catholics are leaving the Church in droves.

One that struck me in particular was from a deacon in Michigan, who offered a perspective based on his pastoral experience.

I list his top six reasons below. Read through them and let me know -- feedback@osv.com -- if they resonate with your experience. And is there anything else that should have made it?

1)Rejection of Catholic morality. The deacon recalls a woman who told him she found the Church's moral demands burdensome but was still attracted to the "bells and smells." "For that reason she left the Catholic Church to join the Episcopal Church, which she described as 'Catholic Lite.'"

2) "Catholic guilt." "A devout and faithful member of an independent 'Christian Community Church' told me that he left the Catholic Church years ago because of pastoral insensitivity. He recounted incidents of going to confession in his early teens, and being harshly criticized" by the confessor for minor faults.

3) Poor catechesis. "We have a whole generation of ignorant Catholics who have been spoon-fed a diluted warm and fuzzy feel- good Catholicism without being taught basic doctrine. This has led to an individualized and personalized religious relativism which has weakened the sense of obligation to religious community."

4) Monarchal pastoral model. "A few years ago at a national diaconate conference, a number of brother deacons described serving in parishes where there were still vestiges of the old pastoral expectation of the duty of people in the pews to simply 'pray, pay and obey,' because 'Father knows best.' Chronic clericalism can turn off the best of our faithful."

5) Crisis in the priesthood. In 1971, Dr. Conrad W. Baars estimated that "10-15 percent of all priests in Western Europe and North America are mature; 20-25 percent have serious psychiatric difficulties, especially in the form of neuroses and chronic alcoholism or a combination of both; and 60-70 percent suffer from a degree of emotional immaturity . . . which precludes them from being . . . happy and effective priests."

6) Clergy abuse and betrayal. "Many Catholics suffer 'disillusionment at the monumental betrayal of trust by our Church leaders' in the failure of so many bishops to protect our children from priest predators. Although reports of clergy sexual abuse seem to now be declining, there appears to be an increase in reported clergy financial scandals.

"I suspect that the underlying reason for this trend is found in the the three-word antidote to the crisis as written by Father John Richard Neuhaus: fidelity, fidelity, fidelity."