Stephen BULLIVANT, Mass Exodus: Catholic Disaffiliation in Britain and America since Vatican II. Oxford University Press. 2019. 336 pages. ISBN: 9780198837947. Hardcover:  $32.95. Reviewed by Pierre HEGY, Adelphi University. Garden City NY 11530.

This is a major book about Catholic decline because it provides basic statistics about disaffiliation, reasons about people leaving, and  factors contributing to the mass exodus over the last decades.

The first chapter defines the basic terms used in this study. Those who do not identify as Catholics anymore are called “disaffiliates” rather than defectors, apostates, dropouts, or deserters; the process of leaving is “disaffiliation.” Those who join another church are the “switchers” and those who choose no religion are the “leavers.”  Those falling away from normative practice are the “lapsed Catholics” and the process is called “lapsation.” These terms are more precise than Fichter’s traditional terms of modal, marginal, and dormant members. Bullivant’s research traces the progression of lapsation and disaffiliation, mainly in Britain and the United States. The book begins with two chapters of statistics about disaffiliation, followed by four chapters on the history of disaffiliation.

In the U.S. 34 percent of cradle Catholics have left the church, either for another church (15%), another religion (2%) or for none (17%). In Britain 44 percent have left, but the majority (37%) have opted for no religion. Religious switching is more common in the U.S. while “no religion” has become the main trait in Britain. In terms of U.S. numbers, in 2016 there were in 29.5million disaffiliates, of whom 14.8 million now have no religion and 13 million belong to a different Christian church. These losses depend on the location and the number of immigrants in each diocese. While the U.S. Catholic church has lost about one third of its members, the losses are even greater among Presbyterians, Methodists, Episcopalians, and Lutherans. Finally, a graph of disaffiliation in Britain and the U.S.  by year of birth of respondents shows that from 1910 to 1980 there is a straight line of decline in both countries; more importantly, there is a steady difference of ten percentage points between the decline rates in both countries at all times, as if the causal factors were the same.

The third chapter provides findings about why people leave. In a major study based on interviews of “dropouts” or inactive Catholics in 1980, Dean Hoge found that dropping out happens early in life: 54% did so before age 25. The main reason for leaving was the lack of a strong, intrinsic motivation for attending church; they felt little pressure from parents or society to remain. Another study directed by Bullivant in 2013 found that exit was mainly the result of a slow build-up of dissatisfaction which an incident triggered into non-attendance.

The massive decline which happened in the 1960s was prepared by the progressive disintegration of the close-knit parishes and devotional practices of preconciliar Catholicism. The 1940s and 1950s were a time of great changes due to the end of the World War and the GI bill which allowed veterans to go to college and settle in new suburban development. Catholicism reached its highest point in attendance and devotional practices but the children who grew up in these transformative years will break out of this mold in the turbulent sixties.

How much is Vatican II implicated in the mass exodus? The council wanted the liturgy to “become pastorally efficacious to the fullest degree” by removing repetitions and accretions from the canon of the Mass, calling for a greater involvement of the people, and using the mother tongue and a wider range of music. These changes did not translate into stopping the decline of in attendance or increasing conversions, although these were exciting times. More importantly, the emphasis on the liturgy came with a de-emphasis on traditional devotions. Sacrosanctum Concilium characterized the Mass as “a sacred action surpassing all others; no other action of the Church can equal its efficacy by the same title and to the same degree” (SC 7). Nothing should detract from this “summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed” and distract from “the font from which all her power flows.” This statement implied a change of direction in centuries-old popular practices. Moreover, the council led to the elimination to numerous saints from the liturgical calendar; it is the saints that constituted the calendar of popular piety, not the liturgy. The rich devotional life of traditional Catholicism did not survive very long, while the elimination of no-meat on Friday stripped Catholics of a major social marker of their identity.

The 1970s and 80s were times of crisis. In a graph illustrating the decline of weekly attendance from 1972 to 2016 we can see the difference in decline between all Catholics (including converts) and cradle Catholics whose decline is about 10 percent lower, ending at 15 percent instead of 25 percent. It is towards the cradle Catholics that the church is most responsible since they are the fruit of parish education and spiritual development. The graph that follows shows that weekly attenders have dropped from 35 percent to 15 percent while the disaffiliates have moved from 15 percent to 35 percent, but the non-attenders have changed little, from 5 percent to ten percent. This means that increasingly people move from regular attendance to disaffiliation; this is particularly true of the young. The 1970s and 80s were the time of superficial religious education (“the beige Catholicism” of Robert Barron) and often casual liturgies in the midst of vanishing devotions which affected the new generation.

We now come to the 21st century which is dominated by the sexual crisis. In his study in Portsmouth, Bullivant found that “Around half of all respondents either agreed or strongly agreed that the scandals in the Catholic Church were a factor in their decision to stop attending Mass.” In a chart showing attendance rates in various dioceses, one can see a dip in 2002 when the Boston Globe published its findings, particularly in the Boston archdiocese. Then “worse than 2002” came the revelations about McCarrick, Cardinal-Archbishop of Washington, DC, and a few months later, the official report of a Pennsylvania Grand Jury investigation. Not surprisingly, the “nones” have increased dramatically to 22 percent in 2016 and 33% among the young.

The epilogue discusses the impact of Vatican II.  The council obviously changed the liturgy forever, but it did not stop the mass exodus that was already under way. The book concludes with a description rather than an interpretation: “Catholics ‘became like everyone else’ at precisely the same moment as ‘everybody else’ started rapidly to become less orthodoxly believing, less regularly practising (sic), and ultimately, less religiously identifying.”

This book was written for scholars.  By tracing the decline among the cradle Catholics Bullivant wanted to point to the massive losses among those brought up in the bosom of the church. These losses would even have been greater if the author had eliminated from his sample the immigrants who drive up the attendance rates; without the input of immigrants, Catholic losses in the U.S. would be about the same as in Britain. Will church leaders wake up to the challenge?

What is needed is a pastoral study, going over the various findings of this book and suggesting possible strategies for stopping the decline and initiating a renewal.  There are many growing churches in Britain and the U.S. Catholics could learn from. Pastoral ecumenism is even more needed than theological ecumenism, and the social sciences can contribute to it.