By Catherine Pepinster
Roman Catholics have been so traumatised by their church’s clerical abuse scandal that a third of previously regular mass-goers have stopped attending — and many are so ashamed of their church’s track record on abuse that they do not admit to being Catholic.
These are the findings of a survey by Durham University which also shows that the drop in mass attendance means a drop in income from collections — at a time when the Catholic church is spending more money on safeguarding and has also been financially hit by paying compensation to victims of abuse.
The survey, commissioned by the Centre for Catholic Studies at Durham University, also found that more than three-quarters of Catholics thought the church needed to make further reforms to prevent more cases of child sexual abuse, while a third of regular mass-goers think the bishops have not handled the crisis well.
The findings come from 3,000 Catholics questioned by YouGov on behalf of the Centre for Catholic Studies. It included regular attending (at least once a month) and occasional attending (less than once a month) churchgoers as well as those who do not go to mass but identify as Catholics. It reveals that the abuse crisis has caused overall a substantial distancing of many Catholics from their church, through cutting attendance and limiting their financial support.
Although many Catholics who still attend are shocked by what has happened, they seem to have held on to a more positive attitude to the institution despite many of them being critical of their bishops, than those who have effectively left. What they do share with more occasional attenders and those who do not go to mass is greater approval for Pope Francis’s initiatives on abuse than that of the bishops.
One of the study’s co-authors, Dr Greg Ryan from the department of theology at Durham, commented: “The lack of confidence by regular mass-goers in the handling of abuse cases by bishops indicates that Catholics are underwhelmed by the church’s response and feel there is a need for improvement.”
According to Marcus Pound, also a co-author: “Although regular mass-goers are critical of the hierarchy, they compare what’s happened in other parts of society, and say that you will never eradicate it entirely but you need to address the culture”.
“What is needed in the Catholic Church is a much more concerted engagement with survivors”.
The survey follows The Cross of the Moment, a report published in April as part of the same research. This four-year study listened to the voices of victims and survivors of child sexual abuse and others affected across the Catholic community. But Dr Pound said that Durham had still not had a response from the Catholic bishops to the report’s findings.
In recent years the Catholic church has been hit by large numbers of accusations of sexual abuse of children by priests, some of them leading to criminal prosecution and the jailing of perpetrators. In 2020 the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse reported on the Catholic church in England and Wales, castigating it for sweeping abuse under the carpet — abuse which led to more than 3,000 complaints about 900 individuals between 1970 and 2015. It also said that abuse was far from being solely historical.
The church has changed its safeguarding procedures several times in the past 20 years, with the formation of the Catholic Safeguarding Standard Agency (CSSA) being set up in the wake of abuse inquiry, charged with providing independent scrutiny of dioceses and religious groups. Now its brief will be changed, with the agency no longer offering advice to dioceses but only auditing what they do. Another body will be set up to offer advice after concern that the CSSA might end up inspecting what it had advised a diocese to do.
The CSSA is also looking for a new leader. Its launch chairman, Nazir Afzal, previously known for his role prosecuting grooming gangs in the north of England, has completed a three-year term and has now been appointed to chair the Church of England’s National Safeguarding Panel, responsible for scrutinising safeguarding policy and guidance across the Church of England.
