Young Catholics

I have no business addressing this topic. I can’t even communicate with Jamie Manson to congratulate her on her new job because I’m not on the social media she suggests. That she’s so modern does make me feel that she’ll continue doing a great job speaking to and for Catholic women everywhere.

Articles in print are coming fast and furious about social media: Tiktok good. Twitter and bishops not so much.

A non-social medium, the Pope’s new encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, comes out tomorrow. Bob Shine forcefully responded to the title Thursday; he concludes it’s “not about brothers and sisters, but about the entire People of God in all our wondrous gender diversity.” I’ll write more about the text when I can read the whole thing.

Instead, this week more than social media inspires me to write about young Catholics. So much has been happening that I have not addressed three long reports that came out this summer; one is from WOC. First, though, I’ll address the other two as presented in the Catholic press.

NCR reports on a creative 2019 Pew Research Study that surveyed family pairs, one teenager aged 13-17 and one of their parents. It turns out that religion is more important to parents than teens, though attendance at services is about the same. The survey separated out Catholics enough to note that about a quarter of teens who identified as “nones” had a Catholic parent, and half of these Catholic teens enjoyed religious practices or discussions at home.

America headlines a sobering view of a more recent study by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA). During the pandemic, a majority of 18-35 year olds never watched an online or televised mass, and only 11% watched very often. There’s better news later on: a majority prayed more at home, and only 18% said they had not practiced their faith at all.

WOC’s study does not lament irreligious youth. It looks at a narrow sliver of young Catholic women who have chosen ministry or are in formation to do so.

WOC’s 224 participants are a self-selected group of women ages 18-40 who were found by asking graduate programs and advocacy organizations to circulate a survey. While this might have resulted in a population more academically oriented than if the entire universe of women lay ministers were surveyed, it did result in a spotlight on women we want to cultivate for leadership in the church. Obviously, they are not as young as those in the first survey, and  these Catholic women are on a path.

Yet most are not walking towards ordination; only 30% would pursue it, though I wonder if the 29% who are unsure would move in that direction if the church opened it to women, which the group generally favored: 62% for priests and 74% for deacons. 82% would not pursue ordination through independent Catholic movements, but WOC is thinking about that 30% and how we can continue this dialogue with them.

73% of the respondents said their Catholic identity is extremely important. This may be due to the fact that most of the graduate programs are in church institutions; half of the women are in Jesuit schools. They also worship mostly in Catholic settings – 86% in parishes, but not exclusively. One of the strengths of the survey is opportunity for multiple choices, so to speak; 67% report worshipping in other settings, though I can’t tell by how many individuals.

I am very happy that 66% feel that their ministry or vocation is recognized in their local faith community, and saddened that 65% of these very committed women do not feel that the global church recognizes their calling. Only 18% felt that women’s ministries are valued as much as men’s.

Now 84% are employed, and 55% are in Catholic institutions. What are the prospects for these women? When the survey gets practical, only 27% are satisfied with the opportunities for ministry in the local church, yet 84.2% replied with something church-related they could do. How do they – and we – close that gap?

Despite their commitment to Catholicism, these young women are not blind to the faults of the institutional church. Sexism, clericalism, and heterosexism are stated in too many ways to summarize. Only 6% of the comments suggest that there should be a return to orthodoxy and tradition.

The most open question in the survey is “what are the joys of being Catholic? 

The most frequent answers are reported as clusters of similar ideas: sacraments, liturgy, and ritual; community and universality; history, tradition, and theology. Fifteen other categories are listed, beginning with social justice teaching and ending with environment. I imagine these responses are from some women who’d be ordained and some who never would, yet almost all want to bring these messages to the church.

“Mainstreaming Women’s Ministries” is beautifully presented on the website, so if you’re young, I recommend you read it there if you haven’t already. Such a graphic-heavy format makes me nervous, so I finally printed the text instead.

What I found there are many more quotations in the women’s own words, as well as the professional summary by WOC Executive Director Kate McElwee and Program Associate Katie Lacz. Their initiative in obtaining this grant is to be applauded because it gives us insight into an important population for WOC’s future focus.

And it’s not as if this survey is unreported. Alexandra Greenwald in NCR does what analyses of most professional surveys do: make individual participants real through follow-up interviews. In addition, she talks with people in the schools where these women are studying, and with McElwee on the future use of the survey data. All in all, this survey is a very important contribution to our movement.