RCIA as Young Adult Movement?
According to the CARA survey:
16% of US Catholics entered the Church after infancy. 8% as children (presumably some of these are being raised Catholic and are simply "late" baptisms but the majority would be entering from another background with their parent(s); 1% as teens, 7% as adults - 75% of whom entered through an RCIA process.
Very interesting: 48% of those who entered as adults did so as young adults between the ages of 18 and 29. Connect that with the Pew Survey findings that probably a majority of US adults reevaluate the faith in which they were raised as children and choose another one as adults. Pew did not, to my knowledge, ask at what age that re-evaluation took place but young adulthood would be an obvious place for it to happen.
So roughly 2/3 of those who enter the Church after infancy do so before age 30.
Looking at RCIA as a young adult movement that is especially meaningful in light of the apparent American norm of reevaluating spirituality and religious beliefs in adulthood. Lots of intriguing implications.
It certainly was true for me and my circle of friends.
posted by Sherry W @ 8:02 AM
7 Comments
7 Comments:
ah, could this explain a bit poor retention following RCIA? Folks test drive the Catholic Church in a young adult movement and then afterward are left to fend for themselves in the sea of the parish.
Does anyone have any actual numbers for "retention" post RCIA?
I'd heard that 75% of those who enter the church had left the church within a period of five years. Don't recall where I heard that.
Some additional information that I recall was that people who were initially enthused, after RCIA, were disabused of their enthusiasm and soon became bored. With no outlet for their enthusiasm, they went elsewhere, often to evangelical or pentecostal denominations.
Sherry,
Speaking of retention, etc., does your organization issue an annual report or keep statistics on whether your "Called and Gifted" participants follow up on what they learn and pass it on?
You ask a question that we've asked for years - but it is very difficult to solve.
We do keep records of participant's raw inventory (undiscerned, initial) scores in a data-base, the only one in the world, by age, gender, location, etc. We have over 10,000 participant records now and that gives us some useful information.
But we are still dependent upon people telling us what happens. In our tiny outfit, we simply don't have the manpower to revisit every parish - much less somehow track down every participant.
Fortunately, since a number of parishes and now dioceses work with us over the years - we've been able to see the impact on them - and we do check in with them periodically to learn from their experiences and invite them to collaborate with us in presentations.
To do more, I'd have to get a major grant and hire someone. But I'd had to add that to my long list of "I need to get a major grant and hire someone" issues. The line forms to the right.
Sherry W
That fits with what I know - but I spent several years in a college town, so predictably our campus RCIA was majority under-22 converts. :)
The local church (minority college students) was majority under-30 converts in their RCIA, and I had several friends who helped out with RCIA there who'd previously converted under-30. They tried to match up the new converts with sponsors who would end up good friends and were active in a parish activity to involve them more in the church after the RCIA ended. Their retention didn't seem too bad, but I don't know what it was over a five year span or anything.
My husband converted when he was 24, and today we were talking with the husband of the young adult coordinator at our parish, who also converted around his twenties.
My grandpa converted around 24-25, too, and until shortly before he and grandma had to move to a nursing home, they were daily mass-goers.
Regarding the retention issue, I would like to echo Sherry's comment that we just don't have data on this. Since nature abhors a vacuum, we tend to fill in the missing statistics with anecdotal comments that are supported only be the constant repetition of them.
I've been working in catechumenate ministry for more than 25 years. When I first started, the number of drop outs was "reported" to be 25%. About ten years ago, 50% was the going rate. Now I see it's up to 75%. Mind you, none of these statistics were ever verified.
The North American Forum on the Catechumenate is researching some grant or partnership possibilities to discover what the true retention rate is. That project is probably several years out, however. Until then, it might be best to report only on our direct experience.
And, in my direct experience, the retention rate is quite high when conversion and not education is the focus of the catechumenate process.
Nick Wagner
TeamRCIA.com
Nick:
Welcome to ID. I would strongly agree - conversion is the key to retention!
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