Faithful in flight?” “

“The Christian churches in the UK could disappear in the space of one or two generations if the faithful continue to abandon them at the speed at which they are doing so today”, concludes “Christian Research” , a Protestant organization that publishes statistics on the Churches in Great Britain every three months. According to the most recent figures, just published, over a million Christian and Catholic faithful will leave their respective churches in the UK in the next fifteen years. On the other hand, the minor churches, such as the Pentecostals, the Orthodox and some Nonconformist denominations, are on the increase”. Many young people, according to the report, are also quitting the Catholic Church. We gathered some opinions. “TOO CATASTROPHIC A FORECAST”, according to the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion. Both Churches have doubts about the reliability of the research findings, or its projections, even though they don’t disguise a real decline in the numbers of churchgoers. “One would have to ascertain how these data were gathered”, says Oliver Wilson, head of the press office of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales. “Of course, if they were reliable, it would be a very worrying situation, but I believe that more exhaustive research is needed. Other statistics too have reported a decline in the numbers of Christian faithful, but not such a dramatic decline as this”. The figures of “Christian Research” are challenged by the Church of england with other figures: “our data show that we have 1.7 million churchgoers per month and over five million who regularly attend the Christian churches”. What has changed, Wilson suggests, “is the way of participating in the liturgy. The Sunday mass has become less important, but the faithful continue to attend church during the week”. Those who most easily abandon religious practice include the young, especially Catholics, though they often return “to the fold” once they have passed the age of thirty. At least that’s the view of Margaret Archer, a Catholic and lecturer at the University of Warwick, who explains: “there’s a sacramental difference between Catholics and the members of the other churches. Our children absorb the message that, thanks to Baptism, they become Catholics for life and this has an impact on them. They know that the Church is always there, ready to welcome them back and some do return. It depends on us to make them feel welcome”. In his new book At the Heart of the World, the Primate of England and Wales Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor suggests that “the decline of Christianity in our age forms part of the wider history of the Church which encompasses periods of death and others of Resurrection. The hope is that new programmes of Christian renewal, based on small prayer groups, will succeed in stemming the haemorrhage of the faithful”. PREVENTING THE FLIGHT. The opinion of the sociologist Archer is confirmed by the “Y Church Report”, (Y being the letter by which British sociologists refer to the generation between the ages of 11 and 18) which, although its data refer to 2002, remains the only survey so far carried out in Great Britain on the relation between Catholic Church and youth. Avril Baigent, author of the study, commissioned by the diocese of Northampton, explains: “I interviewed 330 teenagers and, in a more exhaustive way, a smaller sample of eighty in the diocese, and I discovered they have a spirituality far richer than is commonly supposed and are happy to pray and to speak of God and of Paradise. From a doctrinal view they know little. They are uncertain about what is meant by salvation, or sin, and they also know very little about Jesus. As regards the Church they find it moralistic and out of date”. “But one of the most interesting results of the research was the emphasis placed by the young on the lack of joy in churches. No one smiles, no one seems happy, the interviewees told me. That’s significant because smiling costs nothing and communicating happiness to the young is an effort within everyone’s reach. Usually, the blame is laid on families or schools if our young people abandon church, but no asks himself what can be done to prevent this flight”.