What creates ex-Catholics?

According to the NYT account of the vast Pew study:

The report shows, for example, that every religion is losing and gaining members, but that the Roman Catholic Church “has experienced the greatest net losses as a result of affiliation changes.”
[snip]

The percentage of Catholics in the American population has held steady for decades at about 25 percent. But that masks a precipitous decline in native-born Catholics. The proportion has been bolstered by the large influx of Catholic immigrants, mostly from Latin America, the survey found.

The Catholic Church has lost more adherents than any other group: about one-third of respondents raised Catholic said they no longer identified as such. Based on the data, the survey showed, “this means that roughly 10 percent of all Americans are former Catholics.”

Why do you think people leave the Catholic Church? We tend to accept the explanation that suits what we'd prefer to believe. In a short exchange on a combox yesterday, Daniel, who is a liberal Catholic, expressed his belief that these people get fed up with the dogmatism. I started to say that they wanted more substance, of a conservative sort, out of Christianity than they were getting at a Catholic parish, but then I realized that I really don't know.

The sort of conservative/orthodox Catholic who is fed up with the liberalism, or absence of orthodox Catholic teaching and liturgical practice at his parish, is not likely to leave Catholicism, because he or she has a prior belief that the RC Church is the true church. Those conservatives who would leave (usually for an Evangelical church) are those who, for some reason or another, cease to believe the Church of Rome's claims. I will concede that Daniel's view is probably closer to explaining why Catholics leave than mine, but not quite for the reason he thinks. If you reject the dogma of the Catholic Church, why would you stay when we live in a society in which changing churches is common, and there's little or no social penalty attached to it? Could it be that yes, they do reject the dogmatism, but it's less a matter of, "...and that's why I'm outta here!" than a shrug of indifference, along the lines of, "Well, it doesn't really matter what one believes, so I'm going to find a church that suits my beliefs better?"

Again, I don't know. Have there been any studies?

The Pew study tracked Protestants who left one Protestant church for another (e.g., Methodist to Presbyterian), but it didn't track the same dynamic going on within Catholicism. It's called parish-shopping. Most dioceses have one or more parishes known to the faithful as the "conservative" parish or the "liberal" parish, and Catholics to whom this sort of thing matters will cross parish lines to attend. I would think that as long as this dynamic exists within Catholicism, you are going to have fewer people leaving the Catholic Church, because they can find a place for themselves there.

Pope Benedict is known for believing that the Catholic Church should be more assertive in its authoritative teaching, and if that means people who can't accept it leave, fine. Better to have a church that's smaller but knows what it believes than one that's large but confused and largely directionless. That makes sense to me as a sociological principle. The church -- any church -- is supposed to be about saving souls, not simply offering undemanding therapeutic consolation.

Anyway, I'd be interested to hear from ex-Catholics and still-Catholics on the question: "What creates ex-Catholics?"

UPDATE: Popular Catholic blogger Amy Welborn comments on the Pew study and what it reports about Catholicism, and comes to a pretty stark conclusion about why Catholics leave their church:

In the US, at least, the Church (we’re generalizing here) hasn’t made the case for Christ.

Hasn’t made the case for the necessity of Christ being the center of one’s life and the sure means of finding and staying connected to Christ being through His Church.

Part of what makes me cringe as I read studies like this is that I imagine the response of Church bureaucrats, ordained and lay - when they bother to respond. At that response always seems to involve “programs” that will “energize” and make everyone all “vibrant” and everything.

Which is not the answer.

What’s the answer?

Also on Amy's site, the Catholic lay evangelist Sherry Weddell has a straightforward message for fellow orthodox Catholics:

I know this is going to sound wild but we know that for every evangelical who becomes Catholic, roughly eight Catholics become evangelicals. What if those 8 Catholics left us because they actually wanted and needed what evangelicals do very well and we do rather poorly?

What if they don’t actually care much about liturgy? One could draw the conclusion with some confidence since they have moved in a strongly non-liturgical direction. What if they don’t care much or at all for history or Gregorian chant or high culture or fine doctrinal debates that mean so much to us?

What if they were looking for something else that is genuine part of the Christian faith and life but which we don’t do as well. A Christian community that was small enough to actually know who they were and would notice when they showed up - a stranger. What if they desperately needed to experience the transforming power of God in their life or their family’s life? What if they love and find profoundly reverent and moving worship that is full of emotion and movement and spontaneity? What if they needed to be supported and formed by a local community marked by a genuine culture of discipleship?

In other words, what if they really, really were seeking and hungering to encounter God in a way that evangelicals excel at and we do poorly? What if the most beautiful and reverent formal liturgy in the world (as we think of it) just leaves them puzzled or cold?

While it is natural that we keep talking about doing even more of what moves us (who are here and frequenting conservative Catholic blogs) of what drew many of us to the Church - what if it is irrelevant to those who left us?

Most evangelical converts to Catholicism I’ve met are historically and intellectually minded. They were often uncomfortable with the extroverted, more openly emotional and experiential “feel” of evangelicalism. It was a relief to get out of it.

But what if we evangelicals who are drawn to those aspects of the faith are unusual, a minority? What if many of the 8 Catholics who leave for the evangelical world for every evangelical who goes in the other direction are wrestling with quite different issues - perhaps with as much anguish and integrity as we did when becoming Catholics? What if the things they seek of God and the Church are legitimate?

Can we imagine it? How does that change the conversation?