The results of a project in the UK that invited Catholics who no longer regularly practice their faith to share their story. Why they left and what could be done to change this are two of the questions explored.

Counting Religion in Britain, 1970-2020, the fourth volume in the author's chronological history of British secularization, sheds significant new light on the nature, scale, and timing of religious change in Britain during the past half-century, with particular reference to quantitative sources. Adopting a key performance indicators approach, twenty-one facets of personal religious belonging, behaving, and believing are examined, offering a much wider range of lenses through which the health of religion can be viewed and appraised than most contemporary scholarship. Summative analysis of these indicators, by means of a secularization dashboard, leads to a reaffirmation of the validity of secularization (in its descriptive sense) as the dominant narrative and direction of travel since 1970, while acknowledging that it is an incomplete process and without endorsing all aspects of the paradigmatic expression of secularization as a by-product of modernization.

Of those raised Catholic, just 13% still attend Mass weekly, and 37% say they have 'no religion'. But is this all the fault of Vatican II, and its runaway reforms? Or are wider social, cultural, and moral forces primarily to blame? In 1962, Pope John XXIII opened the Second Vatican Council with the prophecy that 'a new day is dawning on the Church, bathing her in radiant splendour'. Desiring 'to impart an ever increasing vigour to the Christian life of the faithful', the Council Fathers devoted particular attention to the laity, and set in motion a series of sweeping reforms. The most significant of these centred on refashioning the Church's liturgy—'the source and summit of the Christian life'—in order to make 'it pastorally efficacious to the fullest degree'. Over fifty years on, however, the statistics speak for themselves. In America, only 15% of cradle Catholics say that they attend Mass on a weekly basis; meanwhile, 35% no longer even tick the 'Catholic box' on surveys. In Britain, the signs are direr still. Catholicism is not the only Christian group to have suffered serious declines since the 1960s. If anything Catholics exhibit higher church attendance, and better retention, than most Protestant churches do. If Vatican II is not the cause of Catholicism's crisis, might it instead be the secret to its comparative success? Mass Exodus is the first serious historical and sociological study of Catholic lapsation and disaffiliation. Drawing on a wide range of theological, historical, and sociological sources, Stephen Bullivant offers a comparative study of secularization across two famously contrasting religious cultures: Britain and the USA.

Based in the idea that social phenomena are best studied through the lens of different disciplinary perspectives, Empty Churches studies the growing number of individuals who no longer affiliate with a religious tradition. Co-editors Jan Stets, a social psychologist, and James Heft, a historian of theology, bring together leading scholars in the fields of sociology, developmental psychology, gerontology, political science, history, philosophy, and pastoral theology. The scholars in this volume explore the phenomenon by drawing from each other's work to understand better the multi-faceted nature of non-affiliation today. They explore the complex impact that non-affiliation has on individuals and the wider society, and what the future looks like for religion in America. The book also features insightful perspectives from parents of young adults and interviews with pastors struggling with this issue who address how we might address this trend. Empty Churches provides a rich and thoughtful analysis on non- affiliation in American society from multiple scholarly perspectives. The increasing growth of non-affiliation threatens the vitality and long-term stability of religious institutions, and this book offers guidance on maintaining the commitment and community at the heart of these institutions.

"The United States is in the midst of a religious revolution. Or, perhaps it is better to say a non-religious revolution. Around a quarter of US adults now say they have no religion. The great majority of these religious "nones" also say that they used to belong to a religion but no longer do. These are the nonverts: think "converts," but from having religion to having none. Even on the most conservative of estimates, there are currently about 59 million of them in the United States. Nonverts explores who they are, and why they joined the rising tide of the ex-religious. It draws on dozens of interviews, original analysis of high-quality survey data, and a wealth of cutting-edge studies, to present an entertaining and insightful exploration of America's ex-religious landscape. While American religion is not going to die out any time soon, ex-Christian America is a growing presence in national life. America's religious revolution is not just a religious revolution : it is catalyzing a profound social, cultural, moral, and political impact"--

The conversation of this book is structured around five major documents from the Second Vatican Council, each of which Barth commented upon in his short but penetrating response to the Council, published as Ad Limina Apostolorum. In the two opening essays, Thomas Joseph White reflects upon the contribution that this book seeks to make to contemporary ecumenism rooted in awareness of the value of dogmatic theology; and Matthew Levering explores the way in which Barth’s Ad Limina Apostolorum flows from his preconciliar dialogues with Catholic representatives of the nouvelle théologie and remain relevant to the issues facing Catholic theology today. The next two essays turn to Dei Verbum, the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation; here Katherine Sonderegger (Protestant) reflects on scripture and Lewis Ayres (Catholic) reflects on tradition. The next two essays address the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, which touches upon central differences of Catholic and Protestant self-understanding. Christoph Schwöbel (Protestant) analyzes visible ecclesial identity as conceived in a Protestant context, while Thomas Joseph White (Catholic) engages Barth’s Reformed criticisms of the Catholic notion of the Church. The next two essays take up Nostra Aetate: Bruce Lindley McCormack (Protestant) asks whether it is true to say that Muslims worship the same God as Christians, and Bruce D. Marshall (Catholic) explores the implications of the Council’s reflections on the Jewish people. The next two essays take up the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes: John Bowlin (Protestant) makes use of the thought of Aquinas to consider the promise and perils of the document, while Francesca Aran Murphy (Catholic) engages critically with George Lindbeck’s analysis of the document. The next two essays explore Unitatis Redintegratio: Hans Boersma (Protestant) asks whether the ecumenical intention of the document is impaired by its insistence that the unity of the Church is already present in the Catholic Church, and Reinhard Hütter (Catholic) systematically addresses Barth’s questions regarding the document. The noted ecumenist and Catholic theologian Richard Schenk brings the volume to a close by reflecting on “true and false ecumenism” in the post-conciliar period.

Edited by Emery de Gaál and Matthew Levering, Joseph Ratzinger and the Healing of Reformation-Era Divisions examines Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI’s manifold contributions to Catholic-Protestant theological reflection. The collection opens with an introduction comparing Ratzinger’s approach to ecumenism to that of Karl Rahner. Rahner argues that the structural uniting of Protestants and Catholics should take place now without worrying about doctrinal differences. In contrast, Ratzinger argues that unity in Christ requires probing the doctrinal differences and seeking a deeper understanding of the reasoning of each side—on the grounds that the truth of the Gospel that each side desires to preserve will ultimately be the basis for the only kind of Christian ecclesial unity worth having, namely, a unity of the basis of the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Detailed essays follow, treating a number of loci including papal primacy, ecumenical principles, liturgy, evangelization, Mariology, Christ’s birth and the celebration of Christmas, public theology, Christocentrism, Martin Luther, charity, conscience, missiology, justification, the reception of Ratzinger/Benedict in Radical Orthodoxy, and Scripture and Tradition. These essays run the full gamut of Ratzinger/Benedict’s major themes and preoccupations. Ten of the essays are by Catholic scholars, and seven by Protestant scholars. Contributors include many of the world’s leading Ratzinger experts, and the volume opens with an essay by Bishop Rudolf Voderholzer, Director of the Pope Benedict XVI Institute in Regensburg, Germany.

What might one expect to learn from a probability sample study of the Archdiocese of Chicago? Can one form a national portrait of Catholics in the United States from data about Chicago? Certainly, Chicago is unique in its judgments about its clergy. As the eminent Catholic sociologist Andrew M. Greeley argues, it is this very difference that makes rigorous comparisons between Chicago Catholics and other Catholic subpopulations possible. He suggests that history and geography provide a basis for understanding the development of the Catholic Church not just in this specific area, but also in the entire United States. The Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago it composed of two counties, Lake and Cook. At the same time the Catholic population has been pushed up against the boundary of DuPage County by racial change in the city, so that much of the west and south side Catholic population of the city has moved into the southern and western suburbs. In this research area, half of the Catholics have attended college and half of those have attended graduate school. Thus, the conventional image of Chicago as a mix of ethnic immigrant neighborhoods has to be modified-although there are still many new immigrants attending special immigrant parishes. Greeley argues that the official church in Chicago, and by inference elsewhere, has not recognized the community structures that permeate the neighborhoods, that it does not grasp the religious stories that shape its peoples' identity, and it does not understand the intense, if selective, loyalty of the archdiocese to its leadership. As part of this argument, Greeley includes transcriptions of in-depth interviews with former Catholics. This study provides a fascinating window into the world of Catholicism in twenty-first century urban America.