{"id":2122,"date":"2011-04-20T07:33:00","date_gmt":"2011-04-20T12:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/?p=2122"},"modified":"2011-09-30T07:03:47","modified_gmt":"2011-09-30T12:03:47","slug":"catholics-becoming-protestants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/catholics-becoming-protestants","title":{"rendered":"Catholics becoming Protestants"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Jesuit Fr. Thomas J. Reese, former editor in chief of <em>America<\/em>, a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University in Washington, <a href=\"http:\/\/ncronline.org\/news\/hidden-exodus-catholics-becoming-protestants\">has done a deep dive<\/a> into the <a href=\"http:\/\/religions.pewforum.org\/\">Pew Forum&#8217;s U. S. Religious Landscape Survey<\/a> to reveal that one out of every ten Americans is a former Catholic and that one out of three people who were raised Catholic no longer identifies as Catholic. Of those who have left the Catholic Church, half have become Protestant and half become unaffiliated with religion.<\/p>\n<p>Why are Catholics leaving to affiliate with Protestant churches? Sadly, not because of doctrine:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The data shows that disagreement over specific doctrines is not the  main reason Catholics become Protestants. We also have lots of survey  data showing that many Catholics who stay disagree with specific church  teachings. Despite what theologians and bishops think, doctrine is not  that important either to those who become Protestant or to those who  stay Catholic.<\/p>\n<p>People are not becoming Protestants because they disagree with  specific Catholic teachings; people are leaving because the church does  not meet their spiritual needs and they find Protestant worship service  better.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It seems the mitigating factor in the decision to move from Catholicism is feelings and not truth:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8230;those who are leaving the church for Protestant churches are more  interested in spiritual nourishment than doctrinal issues. Tinkering  with the wording of the creed at Mass is not going to help. No one  except the Vatican and the bishops cares whether Jesus is \u201cone in being\u201d  with the Father or \u201cconsubstantial\u201d with the Father. That the hierarchy  thinks this is important shows how out of it they are. While the hierarchy worries about literal translations of the Latin  text, <strong>people are longing for liturgies that touch the heart and  emotions<\/strong>. More creativity with the liturgy is needed, and that means  more flexibility must be allowed. If you build it, they will come; if  you do not, they will find it elsewhere.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/ncronline.org\/news\/hidden-exodus-catholics-becoming-protestants\">Read the full article at the National Catholic Reporter.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jesuit Fr. Thomas J. Reese, former editor in chief of America, a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University in Washington, has done a deep dive into the Pew Forum&#8217;s U. S. Religious Landscape Survey to reveal &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/catholics-becoming-protestants\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2123,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[604,605],"class_list":["post-2122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-catholic","tag-protestant"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2122"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2175,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2122\/revisions\/2175"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}