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Why does no one go to church anymore?
I stopped going to church about seven years ago. I was on a medicinal cocktail that made me feel restless, agitated, and unhappy to sit at Mass on Sundays. Every time I sat in a pew I felt extremely unsettled like those horrible minutes before you vomit.
I was mad at what was happening in my career, and praying to God. Prayers didn’t seem to be making my situation any better. It kept getting worse. I left mass feeling God had forgotten about my pain or never knew or cared about it at all.
I thought God wasn’t listening. Since then I found out He probably was, but I am not sure. With God, you can never be sure not in this life anyway.
So I don’t pray much anymore. Maybe I will more later in life as my fear of death and going to Hell intensify. Like everyone else, I don’t want to burn for eternity.
I would leave Mass after six or seven minutes. Finally, I stopped going and it has been a relief devoid of guilt. Sunday mornings are more enjoyable and less guilt-ridden.
I’m not unique
I don’t believe my change in attitude towards religion is a unique case. More and more people have stopped going to weekly Mass and are not practicing any organized religious rituals because, I believe, they feel it’s unappealing and uninspiring. It’s become an empty and pointless experience, pretty much, for most people; not all, I acknowledge, but most.
I think one big reason for this is what happened on 9/11. We saw that day what people were capable of when they embrace with blinding zeal a religious ideology. The hijackers believed they were doing the ultimate act of faith by killing people and saving their souls. Any religion that makes people believe that is bad to the core, is literally Satanic. This whole real-life nightmare made us all think: So what other horrible things could religion stimulate people to do?
Religion, we saw when those planes crashed into those buildings, has insidious evil power. Religion can be wickedly bad. We had proof: 9/11.
Religion equals bad. It’s a simple concept with massive implications. This incomparably awful day fueled the already-in-motion anti-religion trend.
Then the other bolts of religious hellishness struck: the Catholic priest sexual abuse scandal. Anyone who may have been inclined to go to Catholic Mass became less likely to do so once they learned that priests sexually abused children on a scale so large we can’t even track it.
The whole thing stunk to high Heaven and always will. Wrong on every level. Hypocrisy of the highest order. Rank repulsiveness. As bad as bad gets.
When this disastrous news crashed in on all of us, it’s no wonder an entire generation of young people rebelled against their parents who wanted them to go to Mass on Sundays.
“No,” they said standing firm. “That church is corrupt. Why should I go listen to those priests who molest kids? Nothing they say during Mass has any truth in it. I can’t trust them, and I refuse to go to Mass anymore.”
Can any of us blame any of these younger people for taking this stance? Can any of us really look any of them in the eye and tell them it’s in their best interest to go to Mass even though the priesthood is corrupt and religion has a wretched history of evil?
Of course not. The young people are correct. They should not spend time listening to the words of an institution that commits evil acts – against children no less.
So several million kids grew up not wanting to go to Mass and parents stopped trying to continue this ritual because they were fighting a losing argument.
Gone – an entire generation of people – from attending Mass. Gone – an entire generation of parents who saw the wisdom of their children’s attitudes and stopped going themselves. Almost everybody got turned off.
Covid-19
There’s one other major factor in this growing anti-religion movement: Covid-19. We got used to not going to church during the pandemic and found out we liked having our Sunday mornings free of an obligation to attend Mass. Post-pandemic, many decided not to go to weekly mass.
What’s left is a church less filled, and often near empty, every Sunday. This is an institution on the decline with waning influence and a sordid and ravished reputation. Sadly, the acts of maniac priests ensnared by their own lust are largely responsible for the downfall of weekly Mass and a society-wide disinterest and disdain for practicing religion.
Because religion doesn’t make people feel better or inspired. It makes them feel guilty, sullied, and gross. Religions are in ruins all across the world. Maybe this has been true throughout human history but right now it feels like a more dire situation now than ever.
Does anyone care? Is religion on its deathbed? Seems so.
Not going to Mass nor embracing Catholic doctrine is more honest and not as off-putting and psychologically and intellectually complicated and tormenting. What’s also honest, I am not proud to admit, is this truth: I would rather do what I want on Sunday mornings rather than go to a church and listen to priests. I think a lot of us use this “the church is bogus” argument because we are self-centered and don’t enjoy driving to some building that doesn’t deliver physical pleasures and makes us feel unworthy. It’s not fun to go to church if we’re all being honest.
But still, without religion and Sunday Mass life is more smooth and calm. I’ll take smooth and calm over tumultuous, dirty, and guilt-inducing every time.
Non-religious weddings
Evidence of this growing anti-religion culture shows up at weddings of the younger generation. The ceremonies are far from religious, downright anti-religious, at least the ones I’ve been to. Replacing priests or rabbis or other religious “leaders,” brothers and sisters lead the weddings of their siblings because they don’t want some other person affiliated with a religion to be present for an important event in their lives.
They don’t want religion, or any symbols of it, or people representing it to mess up their wedding days. They don’t want religion to be a part of their lives.
They’ve slammed the door on it and never plan to open it again. Religion doesn’t fulfill them. They want something else in their lives that doesn’t turn them off, something that to them feels more honest, something more spiritually enervating and truthful.
Can any of us blame them? It’s not their fault that religion careened off the rails during their lifetimes in plain daylight. They saw what happened on 9/11 and they found out the attacks were motivated by religious beliefs. They found out about the evil Catholic priests.
Isn’t that enough to make anyone not want to be part of anything to do with religion, to be highly skeptical, to turn somewhere else for meaning in life, to hunt for goodness someplace else?
The answer is self-evident. This is where we are. It’s probably not going to change. It’s sad in some ways. We’ve lost our religious foundations. They were once good – or seemed to be — in some ways.
As I kid I attended weekly Mass with my Mom, Dad, brothers, and sisters. Overall, it was a spiritually enlightening experience although I felt forced against my will to abide. I believed in God and felt his presence. I still do but not one that any church wants to insist I believe in. Too many religions, and too many conflicting ideas. Let me figure this out by myself. It’s easier or at least less complicated and tainted with bias. The belief is that religion is a relic of a past we want to forget ever existed.
Read the Bible?
I have friends who keep telling me I need to read the Bible, that the truth will be revealed to me there about God and religion. I don’t want to read the Bible. It’s too long and hard to understand and filled with deep moral questions and messages that I find uncomfortable to wrestle with. I would rather not engage with text that is at once so revered and controversial and potentially misleading.
Intellectually and emotionally, reading the Bible is too hard for me to tackle. It makes me feel intellectually inept – and I hate feeling that way. And I know if I read it my friends would wonder why I don’t understand it or tell me I need to keep reading it or need to read certain sections again to get their deeper meaning. They will speak condescendingly saying “Don’t you understand what the Bible is saying? Is there something wrong with your intellect?”
Once I learn part of the Bible, they will push me to learn more and the process will be endless pushing. I don’t want that intellectual torment. They don’t know whether the Bible is true either so why listen to them?
I am not happy about this anti-religion trend. It’s dismaying and sad but also necessary and the right path forward.
But it’s at least better than the alternative, believing in something that’s wrong, unenjoyable, guilt-inducing, mentally indecipherable, and dangerous.
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Sammy Sportface, a sports blogger, galvanizes, inspires, and amuses The Baby Boomer Brotherhood. And you can learn about his vision and join this group's Facebook page here:
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