Catholic leaders in Pittsburgh are
considering whether to join a grassroots evangelical movement to bring
people back to church.
Catholics Come Home, a lay nonprofit formed
in 1998 and based in Roswell, Ga., develops and broadcasts
“evangomercial” advertisements that invite inactive Catholics to return
to the faith. It is funded entirely by donations.
“The timing is getting very good,” said Tom
Peterson, founder of Catholics Come Home. “Pittsburgh has a great
diocese. Catholicism is in Pittsburgh‘s DNA.”
Peterson said the organization has “talked
to Pittsburgh over the years.”
The Rev. Ron Lengwin, spokesman for
Bishop David Zubik, said any movement to pursue participation is “only
in the planning stage,” and a committee is set to investigate the “when,
where and why.”
The Diocese of Greensburg has not had any discussions with Catholics Come Home, spokesman Jerry Zufelt said.
From 2000 to 2010, church membership among
Catholics in Allegheny County declined by 27.2 percent, according to the
State College-based Association of Religion Data Archives.
The
Pittsburgh diocese reports a drop in Catholic population from more than
800,000 20 years ago to about 675,000 today.
Nationally, membership in Catholic churches declined 5 percent between 2000 and 2010.
“Pittsburgh is not alone,” said Peterson.
“There are issues all over the world. All Christian faiths are
struggling to keep the attention of members distracted by the business
of the world.”
Joseph Domencic, 39, of Churchill, who
attended Christmas morning Mass in St. Paul Cathedral in Oakland, said
he attends Mass “maybe once or twice a month” because there are “certain
policies of the church that I disagree with.”
“I want to belong to a faithful community, but I have my own personal struggles with my faith,” he said.
The Rev. Thomas Reese, senior fellow at the
Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University in Washington,
said the decline in church membership involves two sets of people:
Catholics who simply don‘t attend church and those who no longer
identify as Catholic.
According to the Pew Forum on Religion
& Public Life, although 31 percent of Americans were raised in the
Catholic faith, fewer than 24 percent describe themselves as Catholic
today.
Reese said the most common reason people
give for leaving the church is because “their spiritual needs are not
being met in the Catholic Church, and they like the worship service in
their new church.”
“The Catholic Church had the attitude
hundreds of years ago that we were the true church. If you want to go to
heaven, you come to us. We were the monopoly on salvation. Like any
monopoly, we got lazy,” he said.
“The reasons they‘re leaving is because
they‘re bored with the worship service. If you want to attract people to
the church, you need good music, a good preacher, a sense of community
and programs for kids.”
That solution is easier said than done, he said.
“The Vatican allows very little flexibility
in how the liturgy is done,” he said. “There are priests who are not
well-trained in doing the liturgy. Some are thrown in very shortly after
ordination because there are so few priests.”
Some churches, particularly in the North
Hills and South Hills, have found success in bringing young parishioners
back into the fold. They‘ve used Facebook to organize Bible groups and
held meetings in bars and restaurants to establish the feeling of a
congregation as “home.”
Members of St. Bernard parish in Mt. Lebanon
visit wineries, discuss current events with guest speakers at coffee
shops and attend sporting events together.
Dan Zitelli, 36, of Squirrel Hill attended
the Christmas Mass in St. Paul with his wife, Trina, 40, and their
2-year-old daughter “because I wanted to be here with my family on the
holiday, but coming here on a regular basis, it‘s not happening.”
Zitelli said that he was born and raised
Catholic, even attended 12 years of Catholic school, but said he doesn‘t
agree with everything the church represents.
“You learn religion, along with mathematics
and social studies, and then you get out into the real world, and you
realize it‘s not like that,” Zitelli said.
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of
Cincinnati joined Catholics Come Home this month.
Nearly 1,600
commercials will air in English and Spanish throughout the Cincinnati TV
market, with an additional 1,500 airing in the Dayton and Lima, Ohio,
markets.
Michael Vanderburgh, director of the
archdiocese‘s Department of Stewardship, said it has recorded a 25
percent drop in church attendance in the past 15 years, though “the vast
majority of people still refer to themselves as Catholic.”
“They‘re still registered as parishioners.
They might come at Christmas or Easter,” he said. “When there‘s a
marriage or a baptism or a death, they‘re back.”