Spaniards are 'losing faith' in the Catholic Church

The shortage of priestly vocations among young people and the gradual abandonment of believers threaten the future of the Church in the Iberian country. 

By Big Media
-12 June, 2017 
Apparently Spain is losing faith. At least faith in Catholicism. This is what the current data point: a steady decline in the number of believers, an increase of parishes that are running out of priests, and a growing defection of liturgical practices set the stage for the crisis of the Church in Spain. 

Fewer Catholics, most atheists

It is estimated that in the last 10 years have stopped attending Mass at least one million people; and youth disaffection towards Catholic institution remains one of the main problems accepted by the Church itself. 

The information comes from several sources. The comparison between the barometers of the Sociological Research Center (CIS) of 2007 and 2017 , evidence that in the last decade, the proportion of Spaniards declared Catholics has fallen from 77.3% to 69.9%, that is, a loss of no less than 7 percentage points, while that of those who consider themselves atheists has risen at a similar rate, from 18.9% to 25.9%.


In turn, the percentage of faithful who attend Mass on Sundays and holidays as well as some weekday fell from 18.5% to 16.3%, a figure which, as explained about the newspaper ' Público ', " taking into account the population variation upward and downward belief implies that more than one million people have stopped going to church assiduously. " 
Shortage of vocation and youth contact

Not only become scarce called "practicing Catholics", but also priests. In the same publication of the newspaper 'Público' appears to highlight a fact: about 4,200 parishes in Spain do not have a priest who treats you . "No one can deny that priestly vocations are few. Surely it is difficult to find a single cause: decline in the number of children, secularization, moral disorientation, marginalization of the Church ... "said Professor Daniel Arasa, the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, in an interview published in September 2016 by ' Confidential '. 

Tridentine Mass in Mallorca (Spain)

This lack of vocation is a linked problem intimately mentioned disaffection that marks the relationship between the Church and the majority of young Spaniards, who not only increasingly further away from the traditional tenets Catholics but are even more critical of its performance and interweaving the social fabric. In an article in self - critical nature of the blog ' Ecce Christianus ' about Catholic event 'World Youth Day', it indicates that young people in Spain "no protest issues such as celibacy, or the way of the Church to keep distance the long arm of the concerns of ordinary people: no, what are protesting is the amount of money that this holiday is costing the state. "

In the aforementioned interview 'El Confidencial', a teacher of catechism in Madrid, admits that "we fail to connect with young people. Key is to be consistent and lead by example, but we must not forget that the vocation is a matter of faith and nothing else ". 
Does the history of Catholicism collapses?

In Spain, the trajectory of the Catholic Church has an unquestionable historical depth. Its traditional affinity with the highest levels of governmental power and its strong presence in the educational and cultural environment have left a mark practically indelible in the minds of the Spaniards. However, as new generations happen earlier, this registers a growing secularization of society. And the future of Catholicism, to the clear distance between young people and the Church, requires too much faith to be perceived with optimism . 

Share it in your networks! 

© Copyright 2012 - 2018 - Big Media