Our Sunday Visitor is reporting on the CARA study survey in 2022 just released:
(OSV News) — Almost two-thirds of Catholics believe in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, but only 17% of adult Catholics physically attend Mass at least once per week, according to a newly published survey from Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. The survey also revealed a high correlation between belief in the Eucharist and weekly or even monthly Mass attendance.
The 2022 survey of self-identified Catholics published Sept. 26 and titled “Eucharist Beliefs: A National Survey of Adult Catholics” found 64% of respondents provided responses that indicate they believe in the Real Presence, that the Lord Jesus Christ is truly present under the appearance of bread and wine in the Eucharist.
That conclusion was drawn from both open-ended and closed-ended questions respondents were asked about their understanding of church teaching about the Eucharist and additional questions to clarify their beliefs.
Read the rest at Our Sunday Visitor
My comments and questions: What is not clear to me is 64% of respondents believe in the real presence as taught by the Church but only 17% of adult Catholics attend Mass at least once a week. What I am not clear on is if of the 17% who bother to attend Mass each week, is it 64% of them who believe what the Church teaches about the Real Presence?
At any rate, as is acknowledged in the article, we some 55 years into implementing Vatican II have failed miserably to do so. I don't see the Eucharistic Revival making much of a difference, although it won't hurt. What will hurt is the on-going confusion being sowed by the Vatican about the Church's doctrinal and moral teachings that will push more out of the Church and attending Mass. Even if the Vatican allows women's ordination, LGBTQ+++ "marriages" and people in mortal sin allowed to receive Holy Communion, even the non-baptized, these people, who have felt shunned by the Church will not return and more will leave who are put out with a Church ruled by the LGBTQ+++ political lobby and all that it represents.
Only a return to the Liturgical piety, rules and ethos of the TLM, even if in the vernacular, will make a difference. And in a completely Modern Mass, kneeling for Holy Communion received on the tongue and distributed only by a bishop, priest, deacon or adult acolyte will turn things around! How you pray and how your receive is the law of belief and devotion!
Only the TLM could motivate and inspire this kind of belief and devotion:
2 comments:
Father McDonald,
Unlike the other priest who posts here, you have matured and speak openly of the failures of the “reform.” Either the Vatican doesn’t get it or they are working for the other team.
I think if Vatican II had occurred 10 years earlier or 10 years later, the liturgical reform would have been more measured, if it had happened at all. The 1960s was a highly iconoclastic period, where virtually anything traditional was suspect: everything had to be new and different, whether in the arts, architecture or music. There was a thinly veiled contempt for the past. Since I was trained in the Liturgy in the late 1950s and the early 1960s ( in Chant and how to use the Missal) much of the reform would have been unnecessary if that training had continued without being abruptly interrupted by the “reforms.”. I was able to participate in the Latin Liturgy better than my parents and grandparents who did not have the benefit of that training.
But you are on the right path, even if the Vatican and its cronies are not. They are heavily invested in the liturgical failure and cannot change course because of their intellectual and spiritual limitations.
I couldn't tell you why, but, regarding the pew missal photo, it just makes me smile. I have several, one close to 100 years old as well.
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