Portsmouth investigates drift from the pews

LAPSED CATHOLICS are being asked why they have stopped going to Mass in an online survey launched by an English diocese.

The survey commissioned by Portsmouth Diocese’s social research unit will use the data to try to stem further departures. Respondents are being asked whether issues such as church doctrine on homosexuality, birth control, divorce and women priests turned them away from their faith.

Dr Stephen Bullivant of St Mary’s University, Twickenham, who is leading the research, said the questionnaire would be available online for baptised Catholics with a connection with Portsmouth Diocese until the end of the year.

“If we are interested in the new evangelisation we need to look at why people have left the Church,” said Dr Bullivant. He added that similar surveys in the United States and Australia had uncovered a wide range of reasons why people had stopped identifying as Catholic.

Participants are asked to complete a multiple-choice section of the questionnaire which asks them to rate how far their decision to stop attending Mass was due to losing interest, their work schedule, an unfriendly priest, too many demands for money or too many scandals.

Other questions concern their views on the atmosphere of the Mass, whether their spiritual needs were being met, and whether they stopped believing in Catholic teaching.

Portsmouth was one of six dioceses not to submit a response to a questionnaire on Marriage and Family life to the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales.  A spokeswoman for the diocese said that it had encouraged Catholics to send their individual responses direct to the Bishops’ Conference.

Go to https://stmarys.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/portsmouth-survey to complete the diocesan survey about reasons Catholics lapse.

Dr Bullivant hopes to complete his report on the responses during the spring of next year.