DEAR EDITOR: I have read with interest Fr Ian Taylor’s article on falling numbers in the Catholic Church and the comments from other readers. May I add my bit?

Falling numbers in the Catholic Church here is not new. What is new is that at last there seems to be some concern over it.

Numbers went up between 1940 to 1960, taking our traditional percentage of the population from 33 per cent of the population to around 36 per cent. Numbers began to fall in the 60s and was reflected in censuses taken between 1970 and 2004. This fall was at first a decline in our percentage of the population. By 1990 not only had our percentage dropped, we were now losing in actual figures.

It should be noted that our census figures do not give us the number of practising Catholics, nor does it give us the number of Christmas and Easter Catholics. What it gives us is the number of those who see themselves as Catholic when asked to indicate what religion they belong to. We can expect that the number of practising Catholics will be significantly lower than the census figures.

Where are we losing Catholics? We are losing Catholics in every zone that can be detected in the census. This does not indicate parish loss or parish attendance. We cannot tell if, with the present mobility of transport, Blanchisseuse church is full on a Sunday because of an increase of visitors during the weekend.

That being said, in the census of 1990 we lost in some areas for the first time since records have been kept. Blanchisseuse was one of those areas where there was significant loss from what had been an almost total Catholic area.

However our loss has been marginal in those areas easily identified as a “wealthy” area or, as in the case of Newtown and Woodbrook, middle class areas, with a declining and a relatively elderly population.

Who have we lost? Loss is correlated with status/wealth. We lose more in poor areas rather than in wealthy areas. Wealth is more important than urban-rural differences.

This is not usually true of statistics in European countries where urban-rural is the most important variable with regard to both loss of numbers and practising.

In European countries the Church keeps its percentage in rural areas even if there is loss in numbers due to migration to the city. However our greatest loss is in areas associated with economic decline, ie, Laventille-Morvant, Point Fortin, Carenage. These are also the areas where children are less likely to go to Catholic secondary schools and less likely to be confirmed and baptised.

Since status/wealth in Trinidad is significantly correlated with race and remarkably so with regard to clusters of poverty, our greatest loss is among the Afro population. There is less loss in Indian areas and very little loss among Whites, followed by Mixed.

It must be underlined that it is Afros who largely account for Church members. Although 99 per cent of all Syrians, over 85 per cent of all Whites and over 60 per cent of Mixed are Catholic, these are not large populations. While one in ten Catholics is Indian, this does not eclipse Hindus or Muslims. There is also a significantly greater loss of women than men.

This is different to European figures where the Church tends to “hold” women for a longer time than they do men. The loss of women is probably hidden in Trinidad & Tobago by a greater tendency of women to practise.

This loss of women would be serious to the Church anywhere – women are particularly important in the transmission of faith in the family and form the majority of the teaching corps. It is particularly worrying here because of the dominance of women in the Trini household.

Non-practising does not necessarily have the same profile as loss. Those incidences of those who do not practise but who consider themselves Catholic, is correlated with age and with culture and not necessarily with class or ethnic origin.

 I suspect that a fair amount of concern over losing members comes form Catholic families whose children and grandchildren no longer practise when they become adults. They may return for their wedding, baptise their children, be there for funerals. I suspect that the number of non-practising Catholics is greater than that of those we have lost.

To whom are we losing? Unlike what seems to be the assumption in Fr Ian Taylor’s article and the correspondence which followed, we are not losing only to Pentecostals. In the 1990 statistics we lost more to Seventh Day Adventists and Baptists than to Pentecostals, and lost to Jehovah Witnesses in roughly the same amount as we were losing to Pentecostals.

We are losing to a number of New Age sects, although these are not yet reflected in the census. There is also some double membership particularly to Unity, but again too small to be included in census statistics.

How does this compare with other countries? We now have the Vatican statistics for 30 years, ie 1974 – 2004. These statistics are of the baptised. They are therefore not strictly speaking comparable to our own: Catholics who have left the Church would only be recorded through the non-baptism of their children. The length of time over which the numbers are recorded – 30 years – partly compensate for this.

The number of Catholics has remained stable in Europe, shown a slight increase in the Americas and Asia and shows an enormous increase in Africa. How does this compare with Pentecostal statistics?

A comparison is impossible. Pentecostal statistics include denominational Pentecostals, ie Charismatics. These are therefore doubly recorded: in their denomination and as Pentecostals.

Pentecostals also include anyone who has had even a brief contact with a Pentecostal Assembly. There is some indication that there is now a decline in Latin America, but this is only an indication. There are no “hard” facts.

Why are we losing Catholics?

For a number of reasons, some of which we share with other countries. The Church always loses members after a Council. In some cases there is open schism, for example, Lefèvre’s “integrist” Catholics after Vatican II and the “Old” Catholics after Vatican I.

These are Catholics who refuse the changes introduced by the Council or who consider that the changes of the Council have not gone far enough. In the case of Vatican II the changes reversed some of the positions of the Council of Trent.

 The most far-reaching change was from a parallel Catholic society which in reality only reached its height in the 19th century, to the former Catholic position of challenging “the world”. This was bound to have the consequence of some loss.

In the case of Trinidad & Tobago Vatican II roughly coincided with our Independence and with the 1970 Students’ Revolt. It was a traumatic period for the Church that we are yet to assess. Both the suspicion that the Church was anti-Independence – which is not quite accurate – and that it was a “White” Church – also not quite accurate – accounts for some of the loss during this period. Abu Bakr and Pearl Eintou Springer were both Catholics.

Is it only Vatican II?

No. Of particular importance is the decline of a distinctly Catholic culture and the rise of a strong modern integrating culture that is sometimes seriously at odds with Catholic doctrine.

 In Catholic culture the faithfulness of God is duplicated on earth with faithfulness in nearly every sphere: in marriage, at work, to the same neighbourhood, often to the same house, to the same parish church and often to the same school parents and grandparents have attended.

Modern globalisation is posited on continued and rapid turnover of jobs (the contract system), of hours of work (flexi-time), of customs (the consumer society), of neighbourhood (the necessity to change jobs and therefore neighbourhood). Women massively entering the workforce outside of the home has alone changed aspects of Catholic culture linked to the model of the family.

It is not only work outside of the home. Families are much smaller and adults are living longer. The result has been an increase in the number of women who have to care for the elderly but with little possibility of family help.

There is a decline of the family as the major socialising institution. Meals together are disappearing. Technological changes have increased this and provided alternative socialisation: the TV, the DVD, advertisements, the Net, the Blog. If before this there was no fracture between the Church and the major socialising institution: the family, there is now.

The parish is no longer the centre of village or urban area. The ease of transport means that people can easily change parishes, or attend Mass at X, Y and Z parish according to the convenience of time. If before village gossip forced regular attendance at Mass, it no longer can.

Once upon a time being Trini and being Catholic was practically the same thing. Christmas was the crèche and carols from door to door and in Arima parang. Carnival began on January 7 – after Epiphany. Carnival ended on the dot of midnight on Tuesday, marking the opening of Lent.

There were no calypsos even on the radio during Lent. Children “cut Lent” with each other in a competition to see who would keep Lenten denials. We walked from church to church on Holy Thursday night to see their altars and in memory of Our Lady’s tears, and for Easter swept out and put on white sheets on the bed, marched for ra ras and kites and played hopscotch. The Trini year, kept us Catholic. It no longer does.

Values have also changed. The character of Sunday has changed. The counter-culture of the Students’ Revolt removed barriers to sex, increasingly re-defined marriage, and introduced Einstein’s Theory of Relativity into values and behaviour. This counter culture is entering a miniscule country suffering severe dislocation.

The rural Catholic area has suffered a severe economic decline and the increasing migration to the towns: Arima and particularly Port of Spain. This is the migration of the rural poor with little resources and little understanding of “town” ways.

In every country this is a population easily penetrated by crime, easily becoming a group of generational poverty, and easily penetrated by religious sects.

Losing Catholics is the result of a far more complex factor than Fr Ian Taylor supposes.
I do not therefore believe that Life in the Spirit seminars for priests, is the answer. We risk avoiding the real issues and refusing the challenge that is there before us.

We must first look critically at what we have discarded, eg the sense of the sacred when we enter a Catholic Church, the centrality of the Eucharist, the beauty of liturgy, the open Church – oasis in the desert of life – Catholics to Catholic schools, the number of things which knit us together.

The challenge to us may well be to bring to our society, the treasures of our long Catholic tradition of walking with God, of uniting Faith with Reason, of the wonderment of creation and the prayer of silence, of the joy of giving all, of transforming deserts, bringing hope, healing the wounds left over from tragic pasts and the wounds of despair that are there today.

If we can in all honesty say: Behold the Man and point to Our Lord on the Cross, if we truly make of the Holy Sacrament the sacrament of sacrificial love, if we can, within our own Church, be the example of a just society where Our Lord is met in the Church’s poor, where in our profoundly racist society we witness in real action to “neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free,” we would have fulfilled our duty.

Will the crowds then come? I do not know. But I do know that we love, not for any reward whatsoever, but because that is how we are.
Marion O’Callaghan

DEAR EDITOR: I write this in celebration of friendship. It is a friendship that spans a period of over four decades. It is a friendship that began when I was a child, living with my grandmother in the rural village of Delaford, Tobago.

I was, then, the innocent victim of a broken marriage. I had just returned from England where an attempt at reconciliation between my parents had failed. I can still remember the day the friendship began. It was Sunday and my family and I had gone to “the movies”. The movies, however, were being shown at the Delaford Roman Catholic School.

Fr Vincent Brendan O’Rourke, parish priest of the Roman Catholic Church, had decided to soften the lives of the villagers by entertaining us with some of the then popular Western movies, on Sunday evenings. I had walked into the “theatre” wearing a Girls’ Life Brigade beret, a remnant of my former life in England. “Father”, as we all called him, was curious about my hat. He questioned me about it and there began our friendship. I, the child, had lived in England and he, the adult, was from Ireland.

After our initial meeting, “Father” became a regular visitor to our home. The many fond memories I have of him include his quiet sense of humour and the times when I would escape my mundane childhood home, to have fun swinging in his hammock at the rectory.

I enjoyed listening to tales of his life and family in Ireland and was elated when one of his nieces became my pen pal. I also remember him patiently serving soup to our village of very frightened people after we sought refuge in the church building, trying to escape the ravages of Hurricane Flora.

The Bible instructs, “Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” I am not Roman Catholic and I never was.

I am, however, a Christian who knows Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. Fr Vincent Brendan O’Rourke continues to help me to obey this command.

Recently I was accommodated by him and the staff at St Dominic’s Retreat Centre in Ennismore, Cork, Ireland. I had not seen “Father” for about 26 years, the time he last visited Trinidad. He is 86 years old now and conducts Bible Study classes at the centre. Having survived cancer over 20 years ago, God continues to be merciful to him.

He had driven to the airport to meet me on my arrival and he ensured that my first visit to Ireland was a most memorable one. On the day I was leaving, “Father” and I prayed together, in the car, before he drove me to the airport.

I asked God to continue to keep him in His care. My friend was scheduled for surgery the week following my visit. It was with a trembling heart that I left him that day.

Joy A Valdez(Via email)