Diocese fights to win back lapsed

THE DIOCESE of Dunkeld has called for an urgent effort of re-evangelisation to win back the unexpectedly large numbers of Scots who identify as Catholics but no longer attend Mass, marry in the Church or baptise their children.

Recent census figures suggest that there may be up to twice as many self-identified Catholics in the country’s dioceses than previous figures suggest but that less than 15 per cent are regularly attending Mass. There is a general consensus that Catholic numbers in Scotland have been propped up by immigration from places such as Poland and Lithuania.

Figures for Dunkeld have drawn attention to the problem via the latest edition of Dunkeld News, the newsletter of the bishop, Stephen Robson. They suggest that in contrast to a declared figure of around 30,000 Catholics in the diocese, as reported in the Catholic Directory for Scotland 2013, there may be nearly 65,000 declared Catholics, as identified by the 2011 census. The newsletter states: “Our diocese is therefore severely lapsed from practice of the faith.”

With Mass attendance figures of below 9,000, baptisms at 271 and marriages at a striking low of 77, there appears to be a serious disconnect between self-identification as Catholic and overt practice, with schools increasingly the only point of contact between Catholic families and the Church.

The newsletter says that the figures should be a spur to use “any means of re-evangelisation”. It states: “We must try anything that will reconnect us with our people. Our people are still there, and we can’t abandon them just because they aren’t going to Mass!”

Ivan Morris, a self-identifying Catholic who lives in Dundee but no longer attends Mass, said: “As long as a wholly celibate [leadership] continues to lose touch with the wider Catholic population in a changing social environment, I don’t see there is much hope of progress. What you have is this mass of people who are notionally Catholic and may pray privately but whose public declaration of faith amounts to nothing more than a tick on a census form.”