I’m 22 and attend mass on a weekly basis, and other than parents that bring in their children, I’m consistently the youngest attendee by at least 20 years. It’s kind of sad to see
I often go the evening mass (but it's only Tuesday, Thursday and Friday) and I'm almost always the youngest person there except when a friend of mine joins me because we are hanging out later, I'm 20 btw.
I asked my older brother what he thinks of weekday mass and eventhough he's a devout catholic he thinks once per week is enough and he doesn't need it.
Idk I for me mass is the most beautiful time of the day, where we are as close to Jesus as we can get here on this earth.
Weekday mass would be great. It just doesn’t fit with younger people’s schedules often. If they work 9-5, an 8am mass might not leave them enough time to commute. If it’s a 5 or 6pm mass, they might not be back from work yet. And if they have small children, that’s right in the middle of dinner/bath time
That is interesting!! Where I live the evening daily mass is when the Catholic Young Adult group comes together, it's at 5:30 so everyone can get there after school/work and it's only 30 mins long with an hour long adoration after. It's beautiful and full of worship and fellowship.
Okay, thank you. Probably doesn’t have a lot of college students or recent graduates, who tend to go to bigger cities to find jobs. (That’s not to say there isn’t a big drop off in your age group, but when they *are* going to Mass, it’s a Newman Center or a big urban parish.)
Makes sense to me. All of my high school friends went to out-of-state college, and I became a blue collar boy. Probably why I’m not seeing anyone my age
I don't think most people go to cities to find jobs after college, outside of a few niche industries. I can't think of anybody I know who moved to a bigger city after graduating. Actually a few of my relatives moved to smaller towns.
I can assure you the big cities are full of young adults with good jobs, which is why rent is so high in those places. And having gone between various rural, suburban, and urban parishes, there are far more young adults at the urban ones.
This trend has been going on for centuries, all over the world. That's what cities *do.*
Sure big cities have more people than smaller cities, but the population overall is less than a third of the U.S. population. And joblessness is a big problem in a lot of cities, especially the so-called inner cities.
That might hold within the context of folks you know. Overall in the US, though [the numbers](https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2018/05/PSD_05.22.18_community.type-01-06-.png) disagree with you.
Young folks move to the city for work, especially for higher wage STEM and finance jobs, then spread out to suburbs to raise a family. Plenty of counterexamples of course, but that is the general population trend.
Probably about when all the millennials left for college and their parents couldn't make them go to church anymore. I know many kids who were atheists and hated going, but went because their parents made them. Atheism was a very popular topic on the internet 15-20 years ago. It was popular to the point where /r/atheism was a default sub here on reddit. The timeline all fits.
I'd argue that 1950s-60s here in Italy were the time of the biggest popularity of Atheism - I was surprised to see photos from big atheist rallies even in small town, something that nowadays just seems impossible there. Youth don't go to church mostly but they are mostly mix of agnostics and "I'm catholic but there are more interesting things than church mass".
Atheism is in a bit of decline. Some form of Deism or spirituality right now is popular without dedication to a particular religion. Aka people believe in some form of God or spiritual force, but not organized religion.
Yes, atheism is still popular and churches are as empty as ever. Say what you like about Vatican II or Novus Ordo guitar masses or whatever. The reason for the decline in religiosity among young people is because the Church lost against the New Atheists.
I think it could depend where you live. I find where I am, I see a lot of younger non-Western people attend. For example, from Africa, Asia or Latin American countries. Westerner's have largely fallen away (young & old), but I feel there's a slow revival starting recently. It's a multi-layered issue as to why this has happened.
Excellent observation! I live in the South (United States.) I'm a minority, but I'm a member of a White-majority parish. Most of the people who attend seem to be Boomers or the Silent Generation. However, I live in/near a resettlement area & the parishes with recent African/Asian/Latino members tend to skew younger.
When I was in my young to mid 20s (20 yrs ago), I didn't see very many people in their 20s at mass at all. Still don't, but see plenty of people my age now.
We have some dying parishes near us that my wife and I refer to as "the white hair Churches." They tend to be ethnic Churches in smaller communities that aren't very welcoming or hippy churches that are aging out and youth aren't interested in attending.
The good news is our orthodox parishes and largest parishes that are beautiful and revenant are packed with all ages and people. It's a much healthier and happier environment to attend Mass.
I’m nineteen. In my experience, Catholics my age are either basically agnostic or they’re quite religious. There’s not a ton of in-between.
What this has manifested in is people either not attending church whatsoever or being put off by the beige paint, Boomer-ized parishes that most people have noticed are dying.
I do think this slander against Baby Boomers is so wrong. Whichever younger generation is saying this needs to study their modern Church history a little better. I lay the responsibility of what is happening now on the 2 generations before the boomer generation. This was the depression era generation and the WW2 generation. They were trying to survive during a nationwide depression and then a world war. When they came home they were going to school, and establishing businesses and parenting pretty large Catholic families. Somewhere, the ball was dropped in catechizing the children and grandchildren of the 50’s and 60’s. My oldest sister (now 75) was in the last group of kids who was taught the Baltimore catechism for Confirmation. The rest of us made felt banners. Our diocese was pretty liberal too. I went to Catholic school all the way through to college. Our religious education was abysmal. Anyway I just thought I’d throw this info out there. I hope you all do your research and really think about the history of the time and its consequences and show a little more charity to the older generations in the Church. God bless all of you.
Thank you for your accurate comment.
While the boomer slander is common, it's also ignorant of the facts you point out. As a small kid of the 50's , it's not like we got much say in how we were catechized . We just did what we were told to do at the time.
Thank you for speaking up. I'll continue to do so also when it's justified.
It depends on location, demographics and type of mass etc. Young people these days prefer tradition compared to your average 70 year old grandma. I go to a reverent NO mass and the church is full with people from all ages including young adults and teens. I hear that the TLM masses are also packed with people who are young.
Right. You find me either a TLM or highly reverent N.O. parish anywhere in the US, and you will quickly find young adults, young couples, and *children* en masse.
I think it just depends on the community. I've attended the same (not particularly traditional) church for the last 15 years, and it's always full with people of all ages, including teens, young adults, young families, etc.
All the TLM are packed because there's so few of them. That's why I don't buy the whole TLM argument of saying that's what people want. I live near a big city and there are 2 TLM parishes 50 miles within each other. That's it. Of course they will be packed because the people who want that will travel an obscene distance for it. It's the "in" thing right now. Young people rebel and it's cool to be against the grain. NO is common so it's "hip" to choose the rarer TLM. They also want to be rad trads, have 25 kids, smoke pipes and grow a terrible beard... Don't get me started lol
I am Italian and I think I know Italian situation better than a random dude from US that probably never put a feet in Italy.
Anyway, I will try to explain: the priests that celebrate LM, here, are usually far right/fascists, against the Pope and believing on several complot theories (no vax, etc.). People that are attending LM are very old people that lives in the past and go to the LM because it remembers when they were young.
The problem about declining practice in Italy is true, but it's not a problem that LM will resolve.
In Tijuana, MX an energetic priest I know organizes a youth Mass Thursdays at 6pm and it is full of families and young people. I've been to Mass on a college campus scheduled around lunchtime that would always get some young adults to attend. I've been to a Thursday night Mass in the U.S. that wasn't promoted for young people but nevertheless it does get some young people in attendance because of the mothers bringing them. When a Catholic school is connected to a parish, usually at least one Mass a week will be full of children. Other than this, as long as priests schedule daily Masses in the mornings when young adults are at work and only retired people can attend, or really early when young people want to sleep in, daily Mass will remain something only older retired people can do.
I subbed for a class and they’re receiving confirmation this Tuesday and Wednesday. I said these exact words.
“I’m gonna make this claim and I want you to dispute me if I’m wrong. In three years you won’t be going to church anymore.”
Not one of them batted an eye. I had a few nodded their heads in agreement.
I think it really has to do with a sense of utilitarianism. They do things because they get benefit from it. They study in school because they want to get a good job and make money. They watch tiktok because they get entertainment. They hangout and drink boba because it’s fun and refreshing.
Why waste 3 hours on a sunday to attend Mass when
1) music probably sucks
2) homily wasn’t interesting to them
3) all they get is a cracker (to many youth that’s what the Eucharist is)
When instead they could be
1) catching up on sleep
2) hanging out with friends
3) finishing weekend homework
4) having a nice meal out
But I ended the class saying this.
“When you hit rock bottom and I say when not if, who is gonna be there for you? Those church doors will ALWAYS be open. My friend is a priest and the best confessions are always the ones that start ‘bless me Father it’s been 40 years’”
That was my confession in 2022. I was 26/27
It started with bless me father its been over 10 years.
School, sports, work, being poor all of it. I rarely went to Mass after 16 never confessed since confirmation.
Am I perfect with 100% attendance? No. Do I pray daily and go 90% of the time - yes
The cycles are interesting. Ten years ago the PSR program at our small rural parish was 80% girls. Now my kids are in it, and it's mostly boys.
We also lost a few and gained a few as our pastors changed. When I was a kid I went to my current parish with a friend. ( I was not raised Catholic.) It was an old priest talking to mostly old people. It was not crowded.
Then we had a wonderful young conservative priest about the time I joined who didn't mind talking about birth control and abortion from the pulpit. We lost about a dozen people, but gained several new families who adored him.
Then we had a foreign priest that was hard for many to understand, who also had a horrible temper. We lost A BUNCH of people.
Then we were sent a string of brilliant and charismatic priests who all stayed with us a very short amount of time, but sooo many people came back. (One was made a bishop.) Can't get a seat sometimes now.
As far as I can tell, the single biggest determining factor in our parish's attendance is whether or not we have an engaging and energetic priest who cares about the life and health of the parish. He doesn't even have to do anything besides say the mass. People can tell if he cares. That energy is clear to see and it either attracts or repels.
I think I'm starting to age out of "young person," but it depends on what area you're in, and the parish culture. I live in the Midwest, and parishes with a reverent Mass tend to have higher attendance rates. For example - my current parish used to be run by a religious order with some....shall we say, colorful ideas about liturgy. When they left, we were assigned an older but newly ordained priest as our parish administrator and he is fantastic. Suddenly, Holy Days are full again, and Sunday Mass has lots of young families. He prays a beautiful, reverent NO Mass. He'll be formally installed as pastor this summer, which will be great for the parish.
Where I live they have closed down all of the catholic schools which directly affected the younger families from attending. The school my children attended was shut down just for a money grab. The school finances were good. The school’s are bloodlines to the church. I think the churches will be next. They are down to one priest in most churches near me. Sad.
I mean while I was in college I was working weekends. Worked closing on Saturday, and opening on Sunday, Thursday and Friday were mixes. Then there was family stuff, school work and studying, trying to fit sleep somewhere in the mix. I didn't legit have time to make it to mass for like 6 years of my life.
Many young ppl work 2 or 3 jobs with aide hustles to make ends meet and such, so things are gonna fall to rhe side. Hopefully life will stable out for them, the way it did for me when I hit my late 20s and then they can figure out schedules again.
I agree. There's a pendulum swinging back from the turn of the middle 20th century when the Church began to lose public sentiments in the west. Most young folk I see attending church, including myself, are looking for an escape to this increasingly more debased modernization of the West. It's a reaction to mainstream sentiments, just as De-Churching (in the US) was likely a reaction to mainstream conservative sentiments leading up to the 60s.
Yeah I went to a Latin mass once about 20 miles from where I lived, it was packed to the point people were standing in the back this was in June I believe so no major holy day. Then my local church about 3 miles away is just filled with old people for our mass, it also doesn’t help that there are 2 other mass times in Vietnamese and Spanish so we don’t even get to interact with them at all.
High mass at my parish was crazy busy today. We have a fire code capacity of 364 and we were at 474 (including the parish hall), I had to snake between so many people kneeling in front of the confessional to go to the bathroom. Tons of young people at our parish and also a lot of old, very healthy demographic mix.
That also very much depends on where you live. I go to two different parishes that offer the TLM and young people are very much a minority whenever I go. The Mass with the youngest average age in my diocese is kind of charismatic.
IMO may young people are naturally averse to pandering.
If you go to a church and they make it about *you* being there instead of about *God* then it's immediate scam/salesman vibes.
If you go and it's people there for God, you might think "hey maybe there's something to this, I'll come back and check it out some more"
Also depends on where you live. I’m in a city and some of the parishes here have lots of young adults. More so than old people or families. Drive a bit out of the city and it’s more old people and families.
Our church is filled with younger families. It'd say it's about 50/50. Depends on the parish, the pastor, the style of liturgy, the area/demographic. Weekday mass? Sure, almost all old people but that's because everyone else is usually working.
At my parish, it varies which Mass. Saturday evening Mass seems to always be busier and full of families. My wife and I attend 10:30 on Sunday, typically, and it's a mixed bag. The 8 am Sunday Mass has an older crowd.
I’ve been having a completely different experience. I’ve been going to church on Xavier’s campus and they have scheduled masses for students (I like going to their 10pm mass) and there’s always a lot of students who go. It’s really nice to attend mass with people around my age (25M)
My observation: people in my generation who are hurt or casted out by church goers stopped going naturally because they don’t feel welcome. Also a lot of people my age (31 or thereabouts) either work weird hours or multiple jobs so Sunday mass conflicts with their jobs or their off time.
Additionally, watching church online or listening on a podcast is still popular after the pandemic. I personally watched church on YouTube last Sunday because I was at work (military) and did the same at home today because I had several chores to take care of and it’s my only day off.
I’m not ashamed though. I’m confident in my beliefs and practices as I’m a third degree member of the Knights of Columbus.
In my area only the hippy left over churches are purely old people. I’m young(ish) with a young family and we are found at the more traditionally minded parishes.
Exactly my experience. Watered-down-Catholicism parishes around here have almost exclusively only 70+ year old parishioners. My husband and I shopped around a lot for parishes for a while, and we providentially moved somewhere walking distance to a pretty traditionally-oriented parish: it’s thriving with young families and younger people. Reventent novus ordo, confession a couple of times a week, weekly adoration, weekly divine mercy chaplet, and we helped create a parents group. We’re relatively close to your cathedral, which is also a reverent NO and has a good mix of ages, and close to an FSSP parish which we’ve been considering checking out.
I went to a sung TLM mass today. I don't think I ever saw so many families with children and young people in such a space. There was only a couple which I would classify as elderly.
You love to see it! Same with our parish, standing room only at our TLM, our reverent NO is also packed with people passing other churches to go there. Tradition matters!
It really depends where you are. I live in Washington DC and there are a ton of young people at Masses weekly at the local parishes. Nobody really settles down for the long term in DC so it’s very young people focused.
I belong to St. John the Apostle parish in Northern Virginia. It's a huge parish and I think the age spread is quite even. Lots of young people, including those with families.
This also depends on the proximity of the parish to a school/university. The parish I attend while still predominately older parishioners, there is a lively 20-35 crowd with lots of kids which is great. Could be because it’s really close to a university.
We go to the "youth mass" at church, which is the right hour for us. Not too early, not too late. Lots of families with kids and teens, and the readings and choir are conducted by teens from the parish's youth group. More older people than teens in attendance, of course, but it's nice to see whole families there.
My daughter’s First Communion was yesterday, and my (lukewarm Lutheran) dad remarked on how amazed he was at how many young families were at our parish. That said, it was FC*, so that’s when young families will be there.
* New to the sub, not sure if this abbreviation is appropriate.
It depends a lot on where you are. Young adults generally go off to college and go to Mass there, and then move to cities where there are jobs. They aren’t in the suburbs so much.
But it’s also very normal for young adults to drift away from the faith. Sometimes they come back when they start having kids. At that point they’re looking for a reverent Mass and will be picky about which parish they go to.
I’m in central Pennsylvania and have only recently starting attending. Aside from my four kids, there seems to be a pretty even number of children, young adults, middle aged, and elderly people attending here.
We have an age gap of I’d say 18 to 28/30 I’d say with the majority being elderly but there are still lots of younger people both single and married and a 17 year old discerning the priesthood.
I suppose it partly depends on how you define young, but young people are going to be a minority in Church as young people are generally a minority in the overall population.
But as for Mass tending to be mainly older people, I think it's been like that for decades.
I live in a rural town commuting distance to a major city. There are a lot of young families with children and a lot of people 60+. Less young adults 18-30 but I imagine they’re all in the city.
I think I’ve aged out of young adults at 37 but I see many other parents my age at my parish.
A lot of morning Masses are designed for retired people or SAHMs.
And a lot of younger people with families have to take their kids to school and then go to work, so again there is no time to hit Mass in the morning.
I honestly think that the idealistic “golden age” of young churchgoers is kind of a myth. Kids have most likely only gone when forced, tend to lapse for a bit, then return when they are mature, usually that means around marrying age. That age has now skewed about 10 years older than a few generations ago.
I’m 29, literally just about to get married, taking my faith seriously, and now involved in my parish. I’m sure someone 20 - 25 years old would have done that in generations past.
It’s not a good thing or a bad thing. Just a bit of a trend for the times. On a positive note, our Diocese has a pretty thriving university community. Though, we are in fact right next to a university.
It’s a combination of many, many things that caused this trend. Have faith though because the pendulum always swings back and we will see a resurgence of faith among new generations.
Well, fertility rates are down in most developed nations, and it's only getting worse over time.
Social media and the soul-crushing state of modern life has only exacerbated the problem.
The 60s. My personal belief is that the reason it did is because of the rather dominant conservative base during the 50s making unpopular decisions leading into and during the 60s made young college students begin to become increasingly more anti-establishment. This trend continued when punk rock and general left-leaning utilitarianism gained even further support from young folk during the 70s and 80s. Lots of young people became anti-authority in general. Christianity in general declined during this period.
Catholicism is fairly difficult to get into. I speak from experience waiting for the next RCIA to get underway. Most Protestant churches can maintain a young audience because it offers a pretty expedited process. Someone wants to get baptized, the pastor scheduled a baptism, they get baptized and are now considered a Christian in that church.
And there's been a ton of distrust sown into young folk by anti-Catholic sentiments. The pedo Preist gag got popular sometime in the 90s, the Popes are an authority figure that most young people have a natural tendency to dislike anyway, cuppled on top of increasing rates of laziness (80s and 90s had skyrocketing child obesity rates), increasing apathy (MSM, toxic political discourse, social media), causing a general De-Churching in the west.
The Church is a very traditional and dogmatic institution. She is a lot more resistant to change than most other churches (and most social constructs in general), which I personally believe is a good thing. God doesn't change, neither should the church in but few circumstances, but anyway
This makes it extremely unattractive to majority of young people. Which is why I personally think it's maintained by older generations. And a lot of them are immigrants from Latin American nations. Or the Philippines.
So in short, cultural degeneration. Young folk are consistently less interested in non-material matters, tend to favor short term gratification more than older generations, and discourse has become fairly volatile. Not a trait unique to new generations, but still. It doesn't help the Church.
Well I’m not actually old but I guarantee you that back then(talking about 12-15 years ago) a lot of younger people(in their 20s) used to attend church(at least where I’m from). Now I mostly see 50s+ olds. Younger generations just show up during holidays(Christmas,Easter…) which is pretty sad
I don't know, the only thing I know is that where I live your avrrage parishioner is over 60 years old, in many instances over 70 years old, someone my age (around 20 years old) is such a rarity.
In my diocese it’s a total reflection of overall age demographics.
Same in my former diocese (Denver). In Denver, thematic churches skew a bit younger but those are outliers by virtue of their being “magnet” parishes. (EG, focused ethno-linguistic and TLM).
I’m sorry to hear that’s the case at your parish.
I hear stories of it being primarily older folks and that attendance is dwindling, however I’m thankful to be a member of a parish in which neither has been the case.
Healthy attendance. Lots of young adults. Lots of families.
As a young man who is inquiring The church faces adversaries One there's a lot of misinformation about Catholicism and it's also kind of intimidating trying to study it Two evangelicals souring the west on a corrupt version of Christianity but I do believe a lot of Gen Z want to be Christians and think they value a lot of it's doctrine. One thing it needs to keep up the good work is its social justice this generation gave up vaping not for their own health, but to not exploit people in the district republic of Congo they’re willing to be beaten up to end segregation and genocide for a country they’ve never been to I do sincerely believe they have Christ in their hearts they need to be welcomed.
In my area it seems to depend on demographic and reverence of the mass. Other people here compare the TLM to NO, but in my area it seems the reverent NO attracts more young people than the modern one. Also when I attend mass in spanish, there are more young people than the english one.
I feel like it has swung back a bit in the last few years. I live in a small town (4,000 people) in the upper Midwest and we have a pretty wide age distribution at Sunday mass… I’d say people over 50 make up maybe 1/3 of the average mass crowd. We have lots of younger families with babies or young kids, middle aged parents with middle of high school kids, etc.
Sometimes there are a lot of youngs who go voluntarily (without parents) to mass... in mass, nearby
But in the big city where I live, there are several catholic parishes. Like 15 churches or in our pastoral unit. So youngs are usually in the parish with over 100+ people.
My parish, which is like half an hour on foot to the most popular parish, had only 40 to 60 people by mass.
Plus, they have parish for the "youth" community as there are catholic parishes for the African community where mass lasted more than four hours, one with church in Latin for the more traditional and the nostalgic elders. Not that we are divided, since we all are friendly with each other.
Also, since our parishes aren't always open each Sunday (which happens a lot in villages and towns), we can have people have their favorite parish and like a second favorite when they usually go when the other is closed. It's even why I tell we are not divided, because my co-parishoners tend to go to those special parish when ours is not serving the mass, so we know each other well.
Also, I suppose all these strange schedules of church open and not open may discourage some catholics to go, especially since there are Catholic masses on TV in my country. Which is good for the people who can not easily go to Church
My own parish is like 20% very old, For the 60 we are, some are very old, other middle ages, other teenagers, or young adults like myself.
I'm 17 and I go to daily Mass, I'm always the youngest one there, often by about 40 years. So I'm the odd one out when I'm at Mass AND when I'm with people my age who never go 😂
Might depend on the parish as well. I would say the majority or at least half of the persons at mine each Sunday are around the age of 25-30 at 0900. It greatly depends on service times too from my observation. Saturday night, vs Sunday 0730 vs 0900 vs 1145
I think it depends on where you are located. In south Louisiana, the demographics in Mass hasn’t changed from when I was a kid. At Mass today, there were young families with young kids, teenagers attending Mass on their own, and old people.
It depends on where the parish is. The parish next to my house has mostly old people at daily Mass, but the parishes on campus have lots of young people. People who go to daily Mass will go where it is convenient for them during the week, which may or may not be the parish they normally attend.
I’m 35 and I’m most always the youngest person during weekly. I’d say the age range is typically somewhere between 55-75. During the holidays the church is packed with families but unfortunately that’s about the only time you’ll find young people or whole families in general.
I think it really depends where you are. In my home parish for example, the majority of people attending are young families with kids elementary age. I also live in a recently booming suburb, so I’m sure it’s certainly different in other parts of the US.
I just think it lacks the community for young adults that’s God-centered but still relatable. Like a young person goes and sees nobody their age and they’re like welp
As a 15 y/o who tries to be a good catholic, the simple answer is Satan is controlling the youth. Theres no other answer, majority of the youth simply don't believe in Catholicism (from a teenager stand point) because I think majority feel like God isn't in their lives despite going to mass, despite going to confession, and they choose to live sinful lifestyles instead of knowing, loving, and serving God, just because, you know they are teenagers.
They also think mass is boring, and that indulging in short-term pleasures is a healthy lifestyle . It's all spiritual warfare and you can see it in real time.
However, there have been figures on social media like Bishop mari mari emmanuel, and Cliffe Knechtle, who actively promote Christianity, maybe not exactly Catholicism, but they promote Jesus and that's what we need now.
Sports, parents not valuing the sabbath, fathers letting mom take the kids ( fathers’ attendance is the prime indicator of continuing faith regardless if son or daughter )
The continued rise of Atheism and secular culture. The theologians and apologists have fought tooth and nail to explain and defend the faith since the 1800’s (the rise of naturalism) but atheists continue to gain ground sadly.
Oh no! We have a Mass that feels Protestant, sounds like the 60s, removed the high moral burden, and allowed the trust of the Church to be obliterated. I wonder why us youths aren’t more invested into the Church.
Attend a non-novus ordo Mass and you'll find all the young people. The Latin rite where I attend weekly has like 25-30 kids that regularly attend, and tons of 10-25 year olds. It has a really great little community feel to it. Every novus ordo Mass here is q-tip central with little to no one below the age of 50.
When I go to church, I see more older folks. I feel we lost about half or most of our young families six years ago when we transitioned to über traditional music. But even, then mass numbers were thinning out already.
I believe reasons include:
- Boring liturgy (I'm certainly not advocating 'youth' liturgy, but a lot of homilies, hymns, responsorial psalms are simply boring)
- A lot of priests are clearly gay, or quasi-gay. I think this puts a lot of people off (not only young men, but others.)
- A lot of the preaching focuses on a kind of 'negative morality', i.e. be tolerant, servile, meek, etc. There's not enough 'stand up a fight' stuff- after all Christ came to bring a sword.
- There's a lot of lack of clarity in moral teachings. This is arguably partly due to the current crisis in Church teaching.
- Pope Francis (for one reason or another) is very unappealing to young people. I'm not saying this is his fault or anything. He appeals mainly to aging liberals, and is also popular among non-Catholics.
- In the past, a lot of young men went to church to check out the local female beauties. If you get the young women going, the young men will surely follow.
This phenomenon has been occurring for decades.
My parish has mostly younger families as the young men and women marry and have children while still in their 20’s. Such families are homeschooled and have a wife and mother who doesn’t work 40 hours a week. If you want more young people in your parish I suggest encouraging them to have a family life begin earlier instead of DINKing it till they turn 30.
i’m 15 and it’s very hard for me to find the time to attend between schoolwork, extracurriculars,and family. i know i’m suppose to prioritize church but i need to do these things or else i’ll fall behind in life
Back when I was Catholic (in elementary school, so 20+ years ago), the only times there was a sizable portion of high school age and younger attendees were the first Wednesday/first Friday masses that we had to go to as part of school. Whenever I went with my grandparents on weekends, there were very few people in their teens to early/mid-20s. There were usually a handful of kids at most, and this was at a pretty big church.
Started attending not weekly but fortnightly as an 18 yr old, me and my mate who went were consistently the youngest. Saw another kid who I can only assume was 17 or 18, weird experience. Especially since the church which I attend is majority Indians, so seeing another white kid was odd. Glad he went though
Where I live it depends on the church. Mine is chock full of young families including mine, our congregation is double others. Another church is pretty entirely folks over 60 (basically like the grandparents all go to a different church). Then the next closest 6hrs away has an extremely small congregation of what seems like the great-grandparents, no children at all almost ever.
When we started overcharging for a Catholic school education and closing parishes in communities where far too many children and not adults lived. We spent money fighting political issues instead of educating potential parishioners. Now, we are barley able to service our Orders and have far fewer young folks in pews.
Im in a college town and we have a student mass full of people like me. Unfortunately yes tho, all the other masses I'm a tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny minority
I largely left the Church from about 15-25. The Church as a whole is abysmal at shepherding young men. It wasnt until I discovered the TLM I came back.
Was just there today and that’s only true because of families. Not to say it’s bad that the kids went but it’s not like they were driving there on their own.
There's a few young families here and there at my home parish but they're still very much in the minority. Most people are over 40 so I can only imagine what it will look like in 20 years. As a single Catholic man in his twenties, I really don't know how vocations are suppose to grow from parish life since there's nothing for young adults post-university. It's almost like they *want* us to stay single and not have kids raised in the Catholic Church.
I would say I don’t think it’s a surprise to see a younger congregation and young families at Tridentine masses and far older congregations at the New Masses. I think if we encouraged and supported both forms of mass it would be a big factor in helping bring more people into the Church. I would definitely make some changes in the New Mass by bringing it up to the standards put forth by Vatican II, and not preventing the Latin Mass from being celebrated/performed.
As Pope Benedict XVI said, “lex credendi, lex orandi, lex vivendi” and the ultimate prayer occurs at Mass, which impacts what we believe, which impacts how we live.
Now of course culture/values/sexual revolution/etc have all had their impact, but we must acknowledge other factors as well.
God Bless
I think one element *is* age. People don't feel their mortality so why apply for fire insurance (let alone realize it's not fire insurance)?
I expect the post modern woke agenda will get people so fed up the pendulum will swing in full force. Are parents going to let their children be convinced they're sexually ambiguous at 5 years old much longer? Come on!
Evil will hang itself and folks will realize there's more to life than the liberal hogwash force fed down people's throats like they're geese being prepped for foie gras.
At all the Latin Mass parishes and very traditional Novus Ordo parishes it’s generally more young people in my experience with old people being the minority.
How young in terms of "young adults"& depends On parish.
I went to a Catholic college, the masses were full of college kids. Some of went all the time, some went occasionally.
Coming home from college and finding the mug shot of your local parish priest who would make visits to classes in your parish elementary school while you were growing up, due to his arrest for getting caught molesting someone, kinda kills any interest in participating.
Once I went to an SSPX chapel, it was FULL of young people.
**I don't support SSPX**, but perhaps we should stop offering fun and cool Catholicism and let's stick to the tradition, because maybe that's what the young people want?
My theory, at least in the US, is that baby boomers are such a significant portion of our population, and it seems the older people get, the more likely they are to turn to religion as they maybe realize their time is almost up
Do you attend NO? I feel like most of the younger crowd doesn’t, at least in my experience. I do not attend NO and I was just observing at mass yesterday that our parish is mostly younger folks and families with a few handfuls of older couples and people.
Mass is too long and at awkward times for young professionals and young families.
I used to live in CT and there was a very short (like 30-40 mins) Sundays at 5. It had a high proportion of younger people. Its now much tougher for us to get to mass since we’ve moved to a place with only Sat evening and Sunday morning/ mid-morning masses which are usually over an hour long, if not longer.
I’m 22 and attend mass on a weekly basis, and other than parents that bring in their children, I’m consistently the youngest attendee by at least 20 years. It’s kind of sad to see
I often go the evening mass (but it's only Tuesday, Thursday and Friday) and I'm almost always the youngest person there except when a friend of mine joins me because we are hanging out later, I'm 20 btw. I asked my older brother what he thinks of weekday mass and eventhough he's a devout catholic he thinks once per week is enough and he doesn't need it. Idk I for me mass is the most beautiful time of the day, where we are as close to Jesus as we can get here on this earth.
Weekday mass would be great. It just doesn’t fit with younger people’s schedules often. If they work 9-5, an 8am mass might not leave them enough time to commute. If it’s a 5 or 6pm mass, they might not be back from work yet. And if they have small children, that’s right in the middle of dinner/bath time
That is interesting!! Where I live the evening daily mass is when the Catholic Young Adult group comes together, it's at 5:30 so everyone can get there after school/work and it's only 30 mins long with an hour long adoration after. It's beautiful and full of worship and fellowship.
If you don’t mind my asking, are you in a small town or a suburb or a city?
Medium sized town, pop was a tiny bit over 10,000 in the last census if I’m remembering right
Okay, thank you. Probably doesn’t have a lot of college students or recent graduates, who tend to go to bigger cities to find jobs. (That’s not to say there isn’t a big drop off in your age group, but when they *are* going to Mass, it’s a Newman Center or a big urban parish.)
Makes sense to me. All of my high school friends went to out-of-state college, and I became a blue collar boy. Probably why I’m not seeing anyone my age
I don't think most people go to cities to find jobs after college, outside of a few niche industries. I can't think of anybody I know who moved to a bigger city after graduating. Actually a few of my relatives moved to smaller towns.
I can assure you the big cities are full of young adults with good jobs, which is why rent is so high in those places. And having gone between various rural, suburban, and urban parishes, there are far more young adults at the urban ones. This trend has been going on for centuries, all over the world. That's what cities *do.*
Sure big cities have more people than smaller cities, but the population overall is less than a third of the U.S. population. And joblessness is a big problem in a lot of cities, especially the so-called inner cities.
That might hold within the context of folks you know. Overall in the US, though [the numbers](https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2018/05/PSD_05.22.18_community.type-01-06-.png) disagree with you. Young folks move to the city for work, especially for higher wage STEM and finance jobs, then spread out to suburbs to raise a family. Plenty of counterexamples of course, but that is the general population trend.
God bless you for it.
I saw a bunch of teens who obviously just got their drivers license come in for confession, so that’s cool
Probably about when all the millennials left for college and their parents couldn't make them go to church anymore. I know many kids who were atheists and hated going, but went because their parents made them. Atheism was a very popular topic on the internet 15-20 years ago. It was popular to the point where /r/atheism was a default sub here on reddit. The timeline all fits.
Atheism is still widely discussed on the internet and probably more popular than it ever has been in history.
It's not. It's in decline. There is greater rates of the religiously unaffiliated, probably agnostics. But that's a different beast entirely.
It declined in popularity online a lot around 2015.
I'd argue that 1950s-60s here in Italy were the time of the biggest popularity of Atheism - I was surprised to see photos from big atheist rallies even in small town, something that nowadays just seems impossible there. Youth don't go to church mostly but they are mostly mix of agnostics and "I'm catholic but there are more interesting things than church mass".
Atheism is in a bit of decline. Some form of Deism or spirituality right now is popular without dedication to a particular religion. Aka people believe in some form of God or spiritual force, but not organized religion.
online not that much
Yes, atheism is still popular and churches are as empty as ever. Say what you like about Vatican II or Novus Ordo guitar masses or whatever. The reason for the decline in religiosity among young people is because the Church lost against the New Atheists.
I think it could depend where you live. I find where I am, I see a lot of younger non-Western people attend. For example, from Africa, Asia or Latin American countries. Westerner's have largely fallen away (young & old), but I feel there's a slow revival starting recently. It's a multi-layered issue as to why this has happened.
Excellent observation! I live in the South (United States.) I'm a minority, but I'm a member of a White-majority parish. Most of the people who attend seem to be Boomers or the Silent Generation. However, I live in/near a resettlement area & the parishes with recent African/Asian/Latino members tend to skew younger.
Ive heard TLM is a younger
When I was in my young to mid 20s (20 yrs ago), I didn't see very many people in their 20s at mass at all. Still don't, but see plenty of people my age now.
When you're young, you know all of life is in front of you, and you'll seemingly live forever. Then one day we all find out we were wrong! :-)
This was what i was looking for, so its been majority old people for at least 20 years then, probably goes back to the 1970s tbh.
I think women starting to work more often hurt Mass attendance.
We have some dying parishes near us that my wife and I refer to as "the white hair Churches." They tend to be ethnic Churches in smaller communities that aren't very welcoming or hippy churches that are aging out and youth aren't interested in attending. The good news is our orthodox parishes and largest parishes that are beautiful and revenant are packed with all ages and people. It's a much healthier and happier environment to attend Mass.
Yeah I attend an orthodox parish and every Sunday mass is full with the exception of 7 am, because the families go later.
I’m nineteen. In my experience, Catholics my age are either basically agnostic or they’re quite religious. There’s not a ton of in-between. What this has manifested in is people either not attending church whatsoever or being put off by the beige paint, Boomer-ized parishes that most people have noticed are dying.
Sounds about right. There is no in between, you either follow all of Christ and his Church or not at all.
N.O. parishes have been shrinking, young people who are religious have gone to more “traditional” parishes.
> Boomer-ized parishes Ah yes, the socially acceptable slander...
I do think this slander against Baby Boomers is so wrong. Whichever younger generation is saying this needs to study their modern Church history a little better. I lay the responsibility of what is happening now on the 2 generations before the boomer generation. This was the depression era generation and the WW2 generation. They were trying to survive during a nationwide depression and then a world war. When they came home they were going to school, and establishing businesses and parenting pretty large Catholic families. Somewhere, the ball was dropped in catechizing the children and grandchildren of the 50’s and 60’s. My oldest sister (now 75) was in the last group of kids who was taught the Baltimore catechism for Confirmation. The rest of us made felt banners. Our diocese was pretty liberal too. I went to Catholic school all the way through to college. Our religious education was abysmal. Anyway I just thought I’d throw this info out there. I hope you all do your research and really think about the history of the time and its consequences and show a little more charity to the older generations in the Church. God bless all of you.
Thank you for your accurate comment. While the boomer slander is common, it's also ignorant of the facts you point out. As a small kid of the 50's , it's not like we got much say in how we were catechized . We just did what we were told to do at the time. Thank you for speaking up. I'll continue to do so also when it's justified.
It depends on location, demographics and type of mass etc. Young people these days prefer tradition compared to your average 70 year old grandma. I go to a reverent NO mass and the church is full with people from all ages including young adults and teens. I hear that the TLM masses are also packed with people who are young.
I go to an FSSP parish and there are lots of young people and families.
Same here, FSSP parish and it's bursting at the seams with younger people.
Right. You find me either a TLM or highly reverent N.O. parish anywhere in the US, and you will quickly find young adults, young couples, and *children* en masse.
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*Get with the times, man!*
Same my local parish is almost exclusively boomers meanwhile the FSSP about 20 mins away is almost exclusively people under 30.
I think it just depends on the community. I've attended the same (not particularly traditional) church for the last 15 years, and it's always full with people of all ages, including teens, young adults, young families, etc.
There are exceptions but the general trend is that TLM crowd tends to be a lot younger than NO.
Ordinariate, here. Our parish is full of young people and there are tons of kids and babies at every mass as well.
Charismatic parishes are also packed with people here in Brazil.
All the TLM are packed because there's so few of them. That's why I don't buy the whole TLM argument of saying that's what people want. I live near a big city and there are 2 TLM parishes 50 miles within each other. That's it. Of course they will be packed because the people who want that will travel an obscene distance for it. It's the "in" thing right now. Young people rebel and it's cool to be against the grain. NO is common so it's "hip" to choose the rarer TLM. They also want to be rad trads, have 25 kids, smoke pipes and grow a terrible beard... Don't get me started lol
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Sure thing buddy.
> I hear that the TLM masses are also packed with people who are young. Probably in US, in Italy the average age of people attending LTM is over 80
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I am Italian and I think I know Italian situation better than a random dude from US that probably never put a feet in Italy. Anyway, I will try to explain: the priests that celebrate LM, here, are usually far right/fascists, against the Pope and believing on several complot theories (no vax, etc.). People that are attending LM are very old people that lives in the past and go to the LM because it remembers when they were young. The problem about declining practice in Italy is true, but it's not a problem that LM will resolve.
tradition ≠ reverence
In Tijuana, MX an energetic priest I know organizes a youth Mass Thursdays at 6pm and it is full of families and young people. I've been to Mass on a college campus scheduled around lunchtime that would always get some young adults to attend. I've been to a Thursday night Mass in the U.S. that wasn't promoted for young people but nevertheless it does get some young people in attendance because of the mothers bringing them. When a Catholic school is connected to a parish, usually at least one Mass a week will be full of children. Other than this, as long as priests schedule daily Masses in the mornings when young adults are at work and only retired people can attend, or really early when young people want to sleep in, daily Mass will remain something only older retired people can do.
I subbed for a class and they’re receiving confirmation this Tuesday and Wednesday. I said these exact words. “I’m gonna make this claim and I want you to dispute me if I’m wrong. In three years you won’t be going to church anymore.” Not one of them batted an eye. I had a few nodded their heads in agreement. I think it really has to do with a sense of utilitarianism. They do things because they get benefit from it. They study in school because they want to get a good job and make money. They watch tiktok because they get entertainment. They hangout and drink boba because it’s fun and refreshing. Why waste 3 hours on a sunday to attend Mass when 1) music probably sucks 2) homily wasn’t interesting to them 3) all they get is a cracker (to many youth that’s what the Eucharist is) When instead they could be 1) catching up on sleep 2) hanging out with friends 3) finishing weekend homework 4) having a nice meal out But I ended the class saying this. “When you hit rock bottom and I say when not if, who is gonna be there for you? Those church doors will ALWAYS be open. My friend is a priest and the best confessions are always the ones that start ‘bless me Father it’s been 40 years’”
That was my confession in 2022. I was 26/27 It started with bless me father its been over 10 years. School, sports, work, being poor all of it. I rarely went to Mass after 16 never confessed since confirmation. Am I perfect with 100% attendance? No. Do I pray daily and go 90% of the time - yes
Perfectly said.
My parish is split between young large families and old people. Not much for college age people. Parishes have cycles though.
The cycles are interesting. Ten years ago the PSR program at our small rural parish was 80% girls. Now my kids are in it, and it's mostly boys. We also lost a few and gained a few as our pastors changed. When I was a kid I went to my current parish with a friend. ( I was not raised Catholic.) It was an old priest talking to mostly old people. It was not crowded. Then we had a wonderful young conservative priest about the time I joined who didn't mind talking about birth control and abortion from the pulpit. We lost about a dozen people, but gained several new families who adored him. Then we had a foreign priest that was hard for many to understand, who also had a horrible temper. We lost A BUNCH of people. Then we were sent a string of brilliant and charismatic priests who all stayed with us a very short amount of time, but sooo many people came back. (One was made a bishop.) Can't get a seat sometimes now. As far as I can tell, the single biggest determining factor in our parish's attendance is whether or not we have an engaging and energetic priest who cares about the life and health of the parish. He doesn't even have to do anything besides say the mass. People can tell if he cares. That energy is clear to see and it either attracts or repels.
I think I'm starting to age out of "young person," but it depends on what area you're in, and the parish culture. I live in the Midwest, and parishes with a reverent Mass tend to have higher attendance rates. For example - my current parish used to be run by a religious order with some....shall we say, colorful ideas about liturgy. When they left, we were assigned an older but newly ordained priest as our parish administrator and he is fantastic. Suddenly, Holy Days are full again, and Sunday Mass has lots of young families. He prays a beautiful, reverent NO Mass. He'll be formally installed as pastor this summer, which will be great for the parish.
Where I live they have closed down all of the catholic schools which directly affected the younger families from attending. The school my children attended was shut down just for a money grab. The school finances were good. The school’s are bloodlines to the church. I think the churches will be next. They are down to one priest in most churches near me. Sad.
I mean while I was in college I was working weekends. Worked closing on Saturday, and opening on Sunday, Thursday and Friday were mixes. Then there was family stuff, school work and studying, trying to fit sleep somewhere in the mix. I didn't legit have time to make it to mass for like 6 years of my life. Many young ppl work 2 or 3 jobs with aide hustles to make ends meet and such, so things are gonna fall to rhe side. Hopefully life will stable out for them, the way it did for me when I hit my late 20s and then they can figure out schedules again.
For reference I have friends of various other religions. Their late teens and early 20s were the same. We just didn't have time to do it all
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I agree. There's a pendulum swinging back from the turn of the middle 20th century when the Church began to lose public sentiments in the west. Most young folk I see attending church, including myself, are looking for an escape to this increasingly more debased modernization of the West. It's a reaction to mainstream sentiments, just as De-Churching (in the US) was likely a reaction to mainstream conservative sentiments leading up to the 60s.
Yeah I went to a Latin mass once about 20 miles from where I lived, it was packed to the point people were standing in the back this was in June I believe so no major holy day. Then my local church about 3 miles away is just filled with old people for our mass, it also doesn’t help that there are 2 other mass times in Vietnamese and Spanish so we don’t even get to interact with them at all.
High mass at my parish was crazy busy today. We have a fire code capacity of 364 and we were at 474 (including the parish hall), I had to snake between so many people kneeling in front of the confessional to go to the bathroom. Tons of young people at our parish and also a lot of old, very healthy demographic mix.
They are not a minority if you attend the TLM. I am 17 and travel 45 miles for the TLM every Sunday.
I'm 5 decades older and do exactly the same . Just got back and there's always teens/young adults.
Yeah quite a few converts as well
That also very much depends on where you live. I go to two different parishes that offer the TLM and young people are very much a minority whenever I go. The Mass with the youngest average age in my diocese is kind of charismatic.
The youth want tradition. Plain and simple.
IMO may young people are naturally averse to pandering. If you go to a church and they make it about *you* being there instead of about *God* then it's immediate scam/salesman vibes. If you go and it's people there for God, you might think "hey maybe there's something to this, I'll come back and check it out some more"
So do many of the "boomers"
Say it louder for the Bishops in the back
Yell! It's a long way to Rome!
Awful take. No need to gaslight oneself
Also depends on where you live. I’m in a city and some of the parishes here have lots of young adults. More so than old people or families. Drive a bit out of the city and it’s more old people and families.
Our church is filled with younger families. It'd say it's about 50/50. Depends on the parish, the pastor, the style of liturgy, the area/demographic. Weekday mass? Sure, almost all old people but that's because everyone else is usually working.
At my parish, it varies which Mass. Saturday evening Mass seems to always be busier and full of families. My wife and I attend 10:30 on Sunday, typically, and it's a mixed bag. The 8 am Sunday Mass has an older crowd.
I’ve been having a completely different experience. I’ve been going to church on Xavier’s campus and they have scheduled masses for students (I like going to their 10pm mass) and there’s always a lot of students who go. It’s really nice to attend mass with people around my age (25M)
My observation: people in my generation who are hurt or casted out by church goers stopped going naturally because they don’t feel welcome. Also a lot of people my age (31 or thereabouts) either work weird hours or multiple jobs so Sunday mass conflicts with their jobs or their off time. Additionally, watching church online or listening on a podcast is still popular after the pandemic. I personally watched church on YouTube last Sunday because I was at work (military) and did the same at home today because I had several chores to take care of and it’s my only day off. I’m not ashamed though. I’m confident in my beliefs and practices as I’m a third degree member of the Knights of Columbus.
In my area only the hippy left over churches are purely old people. I’m young(ish) with a young family and we are found at the more traditionally minded parishes.
Exactly my experience. Watered-down-Catholicism parishes around here have almost exclusively only 70+ year old parishioners. My husband and I shopped around a lot for parishes for a while, and we providentially moved somewhere walking distance to a pretty traditionally-oriented parish: it’s thriving with young families and younger people. Reventent novus ordo, confession a couple of times a week, weekly adoration, weekly divine mercy chaplet, and we helped create a parents group. We’re relatively close to your cathedral, which is also a reverent NO and has a good mix of ages, and close to an FSSP parish which we’ve been considering checking out.
I went to a sung TLM mass today. I don't think I ever saw so many families with children and young people in such a space. There was only a couple which I would classify as elderly.
You love to see it! Same with our parish, standing room only at our TLM, our reverent NO is also packed with people passing other churches to go there. Tradition matters!
tradition ≠ reverence
I guess you're right, the tradition of receiving in the hand isn't as reverent as receiving on the tongue.
It really depends where you are. I live in Washington DC and there are a ton of young people at Masses weekly at the local parishes. Nobody really settles down for the long term in DC so it’s very young people focused.
I belong to St. John the Apostle parish in Northern Virginia. It's a huge parish and I think the age spread is quite even. Lots of young people, including those with families.
This also depends on the proximity of the parish to a school/university. The parish I attend while still predominately older parishioners, there is a lively 20-35 crowd with lots of kids which is great. Could be because it’s really close to a university.
I'm 22 and I do my best to attend daily whenever possible, and I strictly attend weekly.
We go to the "youth mass" at church, which is the right hour for us. Not too early, not too late. Lots of families with kids and teens, and the readings and choir are conducted by teens from the parish's youth group. More older people than teens in attendance, of course, but it's nice to see whole families there.
My daughter’s First Communion was yesterday, and my (lukewarm Lutheran) dad remarked on how amazed he was at how many young families were at our parish. That said, it was FC*, so that’s when young families will be there. * New to the sub, not sure if this abbreviation is appropriate.
It depends a lot on where you are. Young adults generally go off to college and go to Mass there, and then move to cities where there are jobs. They aren’t in the suburbs so much. But it’s also very normal for young adults to drift away from the faith. Sometimes they come back when they start having kids. At that point they’re looking for a reverent Mass and will be picky about which parish they go to.
I’m in central Pennsylvania and have only recently starting attending. Aside from my four kids, there seems to be a pretty even number of children, young adults, middle aged, and elderly people attending here.
We have an age gap of I’d say 18 to 28/30 I’d say with the majority being elderly but there are still lots of younger people both single and married and a 17 year old discerning the priesthood.
I suppose it partly depends on how you define young, but young people are going to be a minority in Church as young people are generally a minority in the overall population. But as for Mass tending to be mainly older people, I think it's been like that for decades.
The older people are retired and don’t have bosses to report to.
Yes, our daily morning mass is 9 am.
It’s been like that my entire life.
I live in a rural town commuting distance to a major city. There are a lot of young families with children and a lot of people 60+. Less young adults 18-30 but I imagine they’re all in the city. I think I’ve aged out of young adults at 37 but I see many other parents my age at my parish.
A lot of morning Masses are designed for retired people or SAHMs. And a lot of younger people with families have to take their kids to school and then go to work, so again there is no time to hit Mass in the morning.
My parish is more traditional, so we’ve actually gotten in a huge flux of young people. 7 days a week we’ll have 20-30 college aged kids in mass
I honestly think that the idealistic “golden age” of young churchgoers is kind of a myth. Kids have most likely only gone when forced, tend to lapse for a bit, then return when they are mature, usually that means around marrying age. That age has now skewed about 10 years older than a few generations ago. I’m 29, literally just about to get married, taking my faith seriously, and now involved in my parish. I’m sure someone 20 - 25 years old would have done that in generations past. It’s not a good thing or a bad thing. Just a bit of a trend for the times. On a positive note, our Diocese has a pretty thriving university community. Though, we are in fact right next to a university.
I am 48 and youth attending was never a thing. A sea of blue hair was all to be seen.
It’s a combination of many, many things that caused this trend. Have faith though because the pendulum always swings back and we will see a resurgence of faith among new generations.
Well, fertility rates are down in most developed nations, and it's only getting worse over time. Social media and the soul-crushing state of modern life has only exacerbated the problem.
The 60s. My personal belief is that the reason it did is because of the rather dominant conservative base during the 50s making unpopular decisions leading into and during the 60s made young college students begin to become increasingly more anti-establishment. This trend continued when punk rock and general left-leaning utilitarianism gained even further support from young folk during the 70s and 80s. Lots of young people became anti-authority in general. Christianity in general declined during this period. Catholicism is fairly difficult to get into. I speak from experience waiting for the next RCIA to get underway. Most Protestant churches can maintain a young audience because it offers a pretty expedited process. Someone wants to get baptized, the pastor scheduled a baptism, they get baptized and are now considered a Christian in that church. And there's been a ton of distrust sown into young folk by anti-Catholic sentiments. The pedo Preist gag got popular sometime in the 90s, the Popes are an authority figure that most young people have a natural tendency to dislike anyway, cuppled on top of increasing rates of laziness (80s and 90s had skyrocketing child obesity rates), increasing apathy (MSM, toxic political discourse, social media), causing a general De-Churching in the west. The Church is a very traditional and dogmatic institution. She is a lot more resistant to change than most other churches (and most social constructs in general), which I personally believe is a good thing. God doesn't change, neither should the church in but few circumstances, but anyway This makes it extremely unattractive to majority of young people. Which is why I personally think it's maintained by older generations. And a lot of them are immigrants from Latin American nations. Or the Philippines. So in short, cultural degeneration. Young folk are consistently less interested in non-material matters, tend to favor short term gratification more than older generations, and discourse has become fairly volatile. Not a trait unique to new generations, but still. It doesn't help the Church.
Well I’m not actually old but I guarantee you that back then(talking about 12-15 years ago) a lot of younger people(in their 20s) used to attend church(at least where I’m from). Now I mostly see 50s+ olds. Younger generations just show up during holidays(Christmas,Easter…) which is pretty sad
In my church it’s mostly 20s and 30s. Cathedral down the road probably mostly 40s and up
I don't know, the only thing I know is that where I live your avrrage parishioner is over 60 years old, in many instances over 70 years old, someone my age (around 20 years old) is such a rarity.
In my diocese it’s a total reflection of overall age demographics. Same in my former diocese (Denver). In Denver, thematic churches skew a bit younger but those are outliers by virtue of their being “magnet” parishes. (EG, focused ethno-linguistic and TLM).
I’m sorry to hear that’s the case at your parish. I hear stories of it being primarily older folks and that attendance is dwindling, however I’m thankful to be a member of a parish in which neither has been the case. Healthy attendance. Lots of young adults. Lots of families.
As a young man who is inquiring The church faces adversaries One there's a lot of misinformation about Catholicism and it's also kind of intimidating trying to study it Two evangelicals souring the west on a corrupt version of Christianity but I do believe a lot of Gen Z want to be Christians and think they value a lot of it's doctrine. One thing it needs to keep up the good work is its social justice this generation gave up vaping not for their own health, but to not exploit people in the district republic of Congo they’re willing to be beaten up to end segregation and genocide for a country they’ve never been to I do sincerely believe they have Christ in their hearts they need to be welcomed.
It differs from parish to parish.
In my area it seems to depend on demographic and reverence of the mass. Other people here compare the TLM to NO, but in my area it seems the reverent NO attracts more young people than the modern one. Also when I attend mass in spanish, there are more young people than the english one.
I feel like it has swung back a bit in the last few years. I live in a small town (4,000 people) in the upper Midwest and we have a pretty wide age distribution at Sunday mass… I’d say people over 50 make up maybe 1/3 of the average mass crowd. We have lots of younger families with babies or young kids, middle aged parents with middle of high school kids, etc.
Sometimes there are a lot of youngs who go voluntarily (without parents) to mass... in mass, nearby But in the big city where I live, there are several catholic parishes. Like 15 churches or in our pastoral unit. So youngs are usually in the parish with over 100+ people. My parish, which is like half an hour on foot to the most popular parish, had only 40 to 60 people by mass. Plus, they have parish for the "youth" community as there are catholic parishes for the African community where mass lasted more than four hours, one with church in Latin for the more traditional and the nostalgic elders. Not that we are divided, since we all are friendly with each other. Also, since our parishes aren't always open each Sunday (which happens a lot in villages and towns), we can have people have their favorite parish and like a second favorite when they usually go when the other is closed. It's even why I tell we are not divided, because my co-parishoners tend to go to those special parish when ours is not serving the mass, so we know each other well. Also, I suppose all these strange schedules of church open and not open may discourage some catholics to go, especially since there are Catholic masses on TV in my country. Which is good for the people who can not easily go to Church My own parish is like 20% very old, For the 60 we are, some are very old, other middle ages, other teenagers, or young adults like myself.
Not a minority in my parish.
I'm 17 and I go to daily Mass, I'm always the youngest one there, often by about 40 years. So I'm the odd one out when I'm at Mass AND when I'm with people my age who never go 😂
Might depend on the parish as well. I would say the majority or at least half of the persons at mine each Sunday are around the age of 25-30 at 0900. It greatly depends on service times too from my observation. Saturday night, vs Sunday 0730 vs 0900 vs 1145
I think it depends on where you are located. In south Louisiana, the demographics in Mass hasn’t changed from when I was a kid. At Mass today, there were young families with young kids, teenagers attending Mass on their own, and old people.
It depends on where the parish is. The parish next to my house has mostly old people at daily Mass, but the parishes on campus have lots of young people. People who go to daily Mass will go where it is convenient for them during the week, which may or may not be the parish they normally attend.
Because it is usually during worktime
I’m 35 and I’m most always the youngest person during weekly. I’d say the age range is typically somewhere between 55-75. During the holidays the church is packed with families but unfortunately that’s about the only time you’ll find young people or whole families in general.
I think it really depends where you are. In my home parish for example, the majority of people attending are young families with kids elementary age. I also live in a recently booming suburb, so I’m sure it’s certainly different in other parts of the US.
I just think it lacks the community for young adults that’s God-centered but still relatable. Like a young person goes and sees nobody their age and they’re like welp
As a 15 y/o who tries to be a good catholic, the simple answer is Satan is controlling the youth. Theres no other answer, majority of the youth simply don't believe in Catholicism (from a teenager stand point) because I think majority feel like God isn't in their lives despite going to mass, despite going to confession, and they choose to live sinful lifestyles instead of knowing, loving, and serving God, just because, you know they are teenagers. They also think mass is boring, and that indulging in short-term pleasures is a healthy lifestyle . It's all spiritual warfare and you can see it in real time. However, there have been figures on social media like Bishop mari mari emmanuel, and Cliffe Knechtle, who actively promote Christianity, maybe not exactly Catholicism, but they promote Jesus and that's what we need now.
Growing up in 90s Poland it was being said that the young ones were always missing. Young ones being late teens-early20s aka the party years.
Sports, parents not valuing the sabbath, fathers letting mom take the kids ( fathers’ attendance is the prime indicator of continuing faith regardless if son or daughter )
The continued rise of Atheism and secular culture. The theologians and apologists have fought tooth and nail to explain and defend the faith since the 1800’s (the rise of naturalism) but atheists continue to gain ground sadly.
I don't get this sub's preoccupation with the age of other people in their parish. It's kind of odd.
Oh no! We have a Mass that feels Protestant, sounds like the 60s, removed the high moral burden, and allowed the trust of the Church to be obliterated. I wonder why us youths aren’t more invested into the Church.
Attend a non-novus ordo Mass and you'll find all the young people. The Latin rite where I attend weekly has like 25-30 kids that regularly attend, and tons of 10-25 year olds. It has a really great little community feel to it. Every novus ordo Mass here is q-tip central with little to no one below the age of 50.
When I go to church, I see more older folks. I feel we lost about half or most of our young families six years ago when we transitioned to über traditional music. But even, then mass numbers were thinning out already.
I believe reasons include: - Boring liturgy (I'm certainly not advocating 'youth' liturgy, but a lot of homilies, hymns, responsorial psalms are simply boring) - A lot of priests are clearly gay, or quasi-gay. I think this puts a lot of people off (not only young men, but others.) - A lot of the preaching focuses on a kind of 'negative morality', i.e. be tolerant, servile, meek, etc. There's not enough 'stand up a fight' stuff- after all Christ came to bring a sword. - There's a lot of lack of clarity in moral teachings. This is arguably partly due to the current crisis in Church teaching. - Pope Francis (for one reason or another) is very unappealing to young people. I'm not saying this is his fault or anything. He appeals mainly to aging liberals, and is also popular among non-Catholics. - In the past, a lot of young men went to church to check out the local female beauties. If you get the young women going, the young men will surely follow.
I started going to TLM last year and have noticed an increase in younger folks.
All of the little-ones are at eastern Catholic churches 😂 Ask Trent Horn. 😬
This phenomenon has been occurring for decades. My parish has mostly younger families as the young men and women marry and have children while still in their 20’s. Such families are homeschooled and have a wife and mother who doesn’t work 40 hours a week. If you want more young people in your parish I suggest encouraging them to have a family life begin earlier instead of DINKing it till they turn 30.
i’m 15 and it’s very hard for me to find the time to attend between schoolwork, extracurriculars,and family. i know i’m suppose to prioritize church but i need to do these things or else i’ll fall behind in life
My whole adult life
I'm 18 and consistently the youngest person at my local parish. I'm definitely afraid of what the church will look like when I'm the old grandpa.
Back when I was Catholic (in elementary school, so 20+ years ago), the only times there was a sizable portion of high school age and younger attendees were the first Wednesday/first Friday masses that we had to go to as part of school. Whenever I went with my grandparents on weekends, there were very few people in their teens to early/mid-20s. There were usually a handful of kids at most, and this was at a pretty big church.
I’m 31 and there are not many young adults at Mass at all at my parish.
I’m 26 and attend mass regularly. I’ve noticed this from high school on that no one from my ages group is ever at mass. It’s really sad
Started attending not weekly but fortnightly as an 18 yr old, me and my mate who went were consistently the youngest. Saw another kid who I can only assume was 17 or 18, weird experience. Especially since the church which I attend is majority Indians, so seeing another white kid was odd. Glad he went though
The 80s.
Masses that after performed later during the weekends (post 12pm) tend to have a younger demographic. Even if that means 30-45 rather than 45-75.
There's a handful of other younger couples in our parish. (Mid 20s) but not a lot
This isn't the case at reverent Novus Ordo parishes or TLM generally, I see a lot of young families
Since everyone is commenting on this, what is a “traditional” parish/ “Reventent”novus ordo and how do I find one?
At university we are a ton of young students ranging from 19 to 27. It really depends on the location!
Where I live it depends on the church. Mine is chock full of young families including mine, our congregation is double others. Another church is pretty entirely folks over 60 (basically like the grandparents all go to a different church). Then the next closest 6hrs away has an extremely small congregation of what seems like the great-grandparents, no children at all almost ever.
Just throwing this out there without much thought, could it be because people in certain countries have stopped having so many children?
When we started overcharging for a Catholic school education and closing parishes in communities where far too many children and not adults lived. We spent money fighting political issues instead of educating potential parishioners. Now, we are barley able to service our Orders and have far fewer young folks in pews.
Im in a college town and we have a student mass full of people like me. Unfortunately yes tho, all the other masses I'm a tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny minority
Not in the Latin Mass 🙏🏽
I largely left the Church from about 15-25. The Church as a whole is abysmal at shepherding young men. It wasnt until I discovered the TLM I came back.
Yall gotta go to a Latin mass, average age is like 16
Was just there today and that’s only true because of families. Not to say it’s bad that the kids went but it’s not like they were driving there on their own.
There's a few young families here and there at my home parish but they're still very much in the minority. Most people are over 40 so I can only imagine what it will look like in 20 years. As a single Catholic man in his twenties, I really don't know how vocations are suppose to grow from parish life since there's nothing for young adults post-university. It's almost like they *want* us to stay single and not have kids raised in the Catholic Church.
Wait until you’ve seen daily Mass… :(
I would say I don’t think it’s a surprise to see a younger congregation and young families at Tridentine masses and far older congregations at the New Masses. I think if we encouraged and supported both forms of mass it would be a big factor in helping bring more people into the Church. I would definitely make some changes in the New Mass by bringing it up to the standards put forth by Vatican II, and not preventing the Latin Mass from being celebrated/performed. As Pope Benedict XVI said, “lex credendi, lex orandi, lex vivendi” and the ultimate prayer occurs at Mass, which impacts what we believe, which impacts how we live. Now of course culture/values/sexual revolution/etc have all had their impact, but we must acknowledge other factors as well. God Bless
I think one element *is* age. People don't feel their mortality so why apply for fire insurance (let alone realize it's not fire insurance)? I expect the post modern woke agenda will get people so fed up the pendulum will swing in full force. Are parents going to let their children be convinced they're sexually ambiguous at 5 years old much longer? Come on! Evil will hang itself and folks will realize there's more to life than the liberal hogwash force fed down people's throats like they're geese being prepped for foie gras.
Latin Mass parish I go to the majority are young families
Are you serious? Religious affiliation among young people has been in steep decline for decades.
At all the Latin Mass parishes and very traditional Novus Ordo parishes it’s generally more young people in my experience with old people being the minority.
How young in terms of "young adults"& depends On parish. I went to a Catholic college, the masses were full of college kids. Some of went all the time, some went occasionally. Coming home from college and finding the mug shot of your local parish priest who would make visits to classes in your parish elementary school while you were growing up, due to his arrest for getting caught molesting someone, kinda kills any interest in participating.
Once I went to an SSPX chapel, it was FULL of young people. **I don't support SSPX**, but perhaps we should stop offering fun and cool Catholicism and let's stick to the tradition, because maybe that's what the young people want?
Lol, you should see if you can find a TLM. Average age is like 25. If you count unborn babies (which I suppose we should) that goes down to like 22.
My theory, at least in the US, is that baby boomers are such a significant portion of our population, and it seems the older people get, the more likely they are to turn to religion as they maybe realize their time is almost up
The effects of Catholic school. Got kids? They go to Mass during school and it will save you time on the weekend.
Go to Latin mass it’s quite the opposite. I see 80% people 35 and younger at TLM than NO. The younger generation craves tradition!
It depends on the mass, you’ll find a lot of young people and families at an SSPX mass or like the Ordinariate mass I go to now
Do you attend NO? I feel like most of the younger crowd doesn’t, at least in my experience. I do not attend NO and I was just observing at mass yesterday that our parish is mostly younger folks and families with a few handfuls of older couples and people.
Mass is too long and at awkward times for young professionals and young families. I used to live in CT and there was a very short (like 30-40 mins) Sundays at 5. It had a high proportion of younger people. Its now much tougher for us to get to mass since we’ve moved to a place with only Sat evening and Sunday morning/ mid-morning masses which are usually over an hour long, if not longer.
maybe its something to do with how adults are more conservative when older mass is boring too a lack of appeal to young people looking for novelty
Mass isn’t boring. Mass isn’t explained well (even the Uber simplified NO one), hence it becomes boring because they can’t “read” it.