They only know that because of church positions on women, homosexuals and, most of all, including laypeople in decision making, they are on their way out.
Anne Gray, Maria Warner, Mary Slawsby and Kelly Finnigan, all middle-age women with grown children, are leaving because they feel they have no other way to express their belief that change is needed in the church.
In doing so, they are joining an exodus. More than 25 million Americans have left the Catholic Church, according to a recent poll from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
The numbers are even more dramatic in Europe.
In Germany, with about 24.5 million Catholics, 181,000 people left the church in 2010, according to the BBC.
In Ireland, just a few years ago, 90 percent of the population said they went to church weekly. That number dropped to 25 percent in 2011, according to a PBS report.
The church’s own statistics show steady numbers. About 17 percent of the people in the world are Catholic, a figure that has held firm for decades.
But church statistics also show Brazil and Mexico as the countries with the most Catholics and rapid growth in Africa, trends that mask declines in Europe and the United States.
Hispanic immigration to the U.S. has made up for the number of people who are leaving the faith, and the Catholic Church remains the largest single denomination.
“Whatever its problems,” Baylor University historian J. Gordon Melton told a researcher for the Association of Religion Data Archives, “the Catholic Church is the strongest ... religious entity in the country.”
Leaving the church
Polls, such as studies conducted by the Pew Forum and others in recent years, don’t ask people why they have left. They only give the hard numbers.
According to a 2008 study by the Pew Forum, 31 percent of Americans were raised Catholic, but only 24 percent now describe themselves as Catholic. That represents a drop from close to 100 million potential Catholics to 75 million today.
According to the American Religion Data Archives, Maricopa County’s percentage of Catholics declined from a high of 17.3 percent in 2000 to a 40-year low of 13.6 percent in 2010. Those numbers represent a decline of about 3,000 Catholics as the population grew by 800,000 over the decade.
The archives’ numbers also show the number of Catholics in the four-county Phoenix Diocese to be 250,000 people fewer than the diocese itself claims. The diocese estimates it has 800,000 individuals and says that number is growing.
The Phoenix Diocese’s own numbers show a decline in priests from 247 in 2000 to 191 now.
It shows the number of religious sisters have similarly declined, from 230 to 173, in the same period.
Rob DeFrancesco, diocese spokesman, said the diocese figure of 800,000 Catholics is based on the U.S. census and parish reports and includes Catholics not registered at individual parishes.
Former Catholics can be found in the pews of almost every other church in town and sometimes even in the pulpits, and the reasons for leaving are as varied as the individuals themselves.
Sue Ringler, pastor at Guardian Angels Ecumenical Catholic Church, had worked at St. Timothy parish in Mesa for years before she left. With a gay son, she said, she could not retain her integrity if she stayed. Her new church is not part of the Roman Catholic Church.
Mark Connelly grew up Catholic but drifted away in college. He later got married and “came to Christ,” as he puts it, in a video posted at the website shrinkthechurch.com.
He now leads an evangelical megachurch, Mission Community Church, in Gilbert.
Unrest in the community
Judging from the decisions of the four Scottsdale women, some of them joined by their husbands at St. Patrick’s, the drain of people has not been plugged.
Anne Gray and her husband, Jeff, took some of the first steps. In late January, Jeff Gray wrote a letter to St. Patrick’s pastor, the Rev. Eric Tellez.
Jeff said that 15 years ago, when his family came to St. Patrick’s, “we were taken with the simplicity of the sanctuary, the energy of the congregation and the progressive messages we heard from the altar.”
But all that changed, he wrote, in recent years.
A newly built church building “glorifies the church as institution, not as community,” he wrote. Church leaders “accept and even support the increasingly strident anti-gay messages” from the diocese and the Vatican. Women are not “meaningfully included” in leadership, he said.
Tellez declined an opportunity to discuss the letter or the women’s decision. Indirectly, St. Patrick’s acknowledges people are leaving but says even more people are joining.
“People don’t know where to go with the unrest,” Anne said. “What’s the best way to effectuate change? Many of us have concluded we need to leave, to take our money, take our children and step out.”
Most of the unrest focuses on the abuse scandal, but plenty centers on what the church considers immutable teachings. Those include opposition to gay sex and marriage, and the decision that no woman can be ordained into the priesthood.
Kelly Finnigan said she felt such church teachings had taken on greater importance in recent years. “The hierarchy is in our faces,” she said, referring to the leadership of the church.
They pointed particularly to teachings about homosexuality, which were not as heavily emphasized 25 years ago. The church teaches that gay individuals should be loved but that those who express themselves sexually are sinners. In addition, the church uses what gay people and their families consider harsh language toward homosexuality, calling it “objectively disordered” and “gravely depraved.”
The Grays have an adult son who is gay.
Mary Slawsby said she thinks about it in terms of looking for a job.
“If I were a young person, would I choose the employer who tells me I can’t hold a position of authority?”
The women said they will miss a number of things about St. Patrick’s and the Catholic Church: the community of friends, worshiping together as a family, ministry opportunities and the history of the Catholic Church.
They also noted many of those things are available outside the church.
For its part, the Catholic Church has recognized that people are leaving. Several dioceses, including Phoenix, have taken part in a TV campaign called “Catholics Come Home,” and some dioceses, notably Trenton, N.J., have sought expert help in dealing with the drain.
The Phoenix Diocese, in a statement from Ryan Hanning, director of parish-leadership support, said the church “ardently desires to heal any wounds caused by the church’s failure to live up to the high expectations of Christian life.”
But the statement said the church would not apologize for its teachings on other issues.