# Bishop Barron on Why Catholics Leave the Church

An episode of [Daily Sermons With Bishop Robert Barron](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6783446284), 27 Aug 2026, 8:53.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/73920854/bishop_barron_on_why_catholics_leave_the_church.mp3



## Transcript

[0:10] Speaker 1: Well, this recently got an advanced copy of a survey
[0:13] Speaker 1: that will come out in an addition of American magazine
[0:16] Speaker 1: pretty soon. And it's by William J. Byron, the former
[0:19] Speaker 1: President of Catholic You and Charles zek And it was
[0:22] Speaker 1: done at the instigation of David O'Connell, who's the Bishop
[0:25] Speaker 1: of Trenton. And Bishop O'Connell had a very simple question.
[0:29] Speaker 1: He wanted them to look into why are Catholics leaving
[0:33] Speaker 1: the church? No one denies that in the last twenty
[0:36] Speaker 1: twenty five years, lots and lots of Catholics have left.
[0:40] Speaker 1: I've said before the second largest religion in America would
[0:43] Speaker 1: be ex Catholics. So Bishop O'Connell said, look, let's try
[0:47] Speaker 1: to find out. So the survey asks as directly as possible,
[0:51] Speaker 1: it addresses those who have left and said why. So
[0:56] Speaker 1: it's a very helpful interesting look. No matter what you
[0:59] Speaker 1: think about the reasons that people give, there they are
[1:03] Speaker 1: there's the reasons that are in their minds. And what
[1:06] Speaker 1: start me first was a fair amount of it was predictable.
[1:10] Speaker 1: People said things like, you know, gay marriage, divorce and remarriage, contraception,
[1:17] Speaker 1: women's ordination, a lot of the sort of hot button issues,
[1:20] Speaker 1: and you know, I'd be willing to bet anybody even
[1:23] Speaker 1: vaguely associate with the church over the past you know,
[1:25] Speaker 1: fifty years could rehearse the arguments pro and con on
[1:29] Speaker 1: those issues and more to it, Let's be honest, are
[1:34] Speaker 1: just things that the church, certainly at the local level,
[1:36] Speaker 1: just can't do very much about. I mean, no parish
[1:39] Speaker 1: priest or no bishop is going to say suddenly, oh yeah,
[1:42] Speaker 1: gay couples come to be married, yes, you know, will
[1:46] Speaker 1: ordain women of the priesthood. So those are things that
[1:49] Speaker 1: really can't be addressed directly. But you know what struck
[1:54] Speaker 1: me about the survey was the number of things that
[1:57] Speaker 1: can be addressed. Things that were really bothering people were
[2:01] Speaker 1: on their minds, given as reasons why they left, that
[2:04] Speaker 1: can indeed be addressed. Here's the first category, what I
[2:10] Speaker 1: call bad customer relations. So a lot of people left
[2:15] Speaker 1: because they were just treated poorly by church leaders, by
[2:20] Speaker 1: church officials, by priests. I'll give you a couple of quotes.
[2:23] Speaker 1: One woman said she just felt undervalued by the church,
[2:29] Speaker 1: another one. Many people echo this. In the survey found
[2:32] Speaker 1: their pastors arrogant, distant, aloof and insensitive. Number of people too,
[2:39] Speaker 1: commented that parish personnel often were very unhelpful, meaning you know,
[2:44] Speaker 1: over the phone parish staffer as they would contact who
[2:47] Speaker 1: were just unkind or indifferent to them. Now, what I
[2:51] Speaker 1: was reminded of was my first pastor, who was a
[2:54] Speaker 1: great man, father, Joe Canaye. He's been dead now for
[2:57] Speaker 1: about ten years, but Joe I remember one day, young
[3:00] Speaker 1: priest and he's talking to the parish secretary and he
[3:03] Speaker 1: said to her, you know, you're the first contact a
[3:06] Speaker 1: lot of people will have with the Catholic Church, and
[3:09] Speaker 1: so you perform an indispensable ministry as you answer the phone.
[3:13] Speaker 1: And I remember, I don't know if she was struck
[3:15] Speaker 1: by it, but I was struck by it that he
[3:17] Speaker 1: was absolutely right that ministry of you know, hello, this
[3:20] Speaker 1: is Saint Paul the Cross parish was a very important one,
[3:23] Speaker 1: and how we deal with people in those simple ways.
[3:27] Speaker 1: And so what struck me was, this is a problem
[3:30] Speaker 1: that can be solved. I mean, I get it. A
[3:33] Speaker 1: lot of pastoral people would say, look, I'm in the
[3:35] Speaker 1: front lines. And so when the church has to say
[3:38] Speaker 1: no to people, either for kind of theological or practical reasons,
[3:42] Speaker 1: I'm the one in the front lines, and it's you know,
[3:45] Speaker 1: maybe all too easy for someone to say, Oh, you're
[3:47] Speaker 1: arrogant and aloof and difficult when you say no to me.
[3:49] Speaker 1: So I mean I get all that. Nevertheless, I think
[3:53] Speaker 1: priests and peristaffers, those who work for the church can
[3:57] Speaker 1: realize that, you know, simple kindness, simple compassion can go
[4:02] Speaker 1: an awful long way toward reconciling people to the church
[4:06] Speaker 1: or keeping people connected. Here's the second one that I
[4:10] Speaker 1: think can be addressed, and a lot of people mentioned
[4:13] Speaker 1: it in the survey, Bad preaching. I'll give you a
[4:19] Speaker 1: quote again here people found sermons very often boring, irrelevant,
[4:26] Speaker 1: and poorly prepared. Now, first of all, as someone who
[4:31] Speaker 1: preaches a lot, someone involved in seminary training, I can
[4:35] Speaker 1: tell you preaching is difficult. It brings together so many
[4:39] Speaker 1: different skills. I mean, to preach well, you have to
[4:42] Speaker 1: know a lot about public speaking. You have to know
[4:45] Speaker 1: a lot about the Bible and how to interpret it.
[4:47] Speaker 1: You have to be able to read the culture well.
[4:50] Speaker 1: You have to be sensitive to the needs and interests
[4:53] Speaker 1: of a very diverse public. So I know preaching is difficult. Less,
[5:00] Speaker 1: we find this complaint now over and over again, that
[5:03] Speaker 1: bad preaching is driving people away. Here's one thing I
[5:06] Speaker 1: would say now about ameliorating our preaching. I think preaching
[5:10] Speaker 1: becomes boring in the measure that it doesn't correlate question
[5:15] Speaker 1: to answer. What I mean is, you can have all
[5:18] Speaker 1: the skill in biblical interpretation of the world, you can
[5:21] Speaker 1: have all the theology in the world, but if you
[5:24] Speaker 1: don't bring that to bear in such a way that
[5:26] Speaker 1: it appears as an answer to a question, that Homley's
[5:30] Speaker 1: going to be boring to people. No matter how clever
[5:32] Speaker 1: you are, how bright you are. The homily should be
[5:34] Speaker 1: a moment when the question coming up from the depth
[5:39] Speaker 1: of the human heart meets the great answer proposed by
[5:43] Speaker 1: the Bible and by the theological tradition. Look at story
[5:49] Speaker 1: after story in the Gospels. What do you find but
[5:51] Speaker 1: an encounter, an encounter between Jesus and somebody who is
[5:57] Speaker 1: questing or wondering or search or suffering. Think of you know, Zachias,
[6:03] Speaker 1: or the woman at the well, or Peter at the
[6:06] Speaker 1: miraculous draft of fishes, or the disciples at the Last Supper.
[6:10] Speaker 1: I mean, whatever it is, there's an encounter with a
[6:14] Speaker 1: sort of questing, longing, aching human heart and Jesus the
[6:19] Speaker 1: answer a good homily. And here I guess I'm hoping
[6:23] Speaker 1: priests and deacons and bishops are listening to me. Is
[6:26] Speaker 1: a good homily is one that brings question answer together.
[6:32] Speaker 1: Here's the third thing. Now, I came up in the
[6:33] Speaker 1: survey eminently addressable problem and one I must confess to
[6:38] Speaker 1: you that I never thought of before I read the survey.
[6:41] Speaker 1: But a lot of people said, you know, I left
[6:43] Speaker 1: the church, I left the parish, and nobody called me,
[6:48] Speaker 1: nobody wrote to me, no one contacted me from the parish,
[6:52] Speaker 1: and so they said, yeah, heck with it. They don't
[6:54] Speaker 1: care about they even know I'm there. Now Again, I
[6:57] Speaker 1: know Catholic parishes are big, some of them three and
[7:00] Speaker 1: four thousand families. I know pastoral staffs are small and overworked.
[7:04] Speaker 1: So I know how difficult this could be. You know
[7:07] Speaker 1: what struck me when I read the survey was huge corporations,
[7:11] Speaker 1: I mean, serving millions of customers. They're very attentive to
[7:15] Speaker 1: customer relations. They are very alert to the problem of
[7:19] Speaker 1: people no longer using their product. Right, if someone's drifted
[7:23] Speaker 1: away from using their product, they'll find out and they'll
[7:27] Speaker 1: contact them. Well, heck, if corporations serving millions can do that.
[7:31] Speaker 1: I don't see why a parish can't do it. And
[7:34] Speaker 1: you know, it's relatively simple. Notice when somebody has left,
[7:40] Speaker 1: send an email, send a note, make a phone call.
[7:43] Speaker 1: At best, make a pastoral visit and ask some simple questions.
[7:47] Speaker 1: You know, hey, we we miss you. We've noticed you're
[7:49] Speaker 1: not at mass anymore. Can we help with anything? Have
[7:54] Speaker 1: we done something wrong that we could help you with
[7:56] Speaker 1: or change? We'd love to have you back. I don't
[8:00] Speaker 1: know how difficult that would be for a perish in
[8:02] Speaker 1: a very concrete way to follow up with people and
[8:06] Speaker 1: then be willing to sit down and listen to them. So,
[8:10] Speaker 1: you know, it's interesting experience reading the survey. Again, a
[8:13] Speaker 1: lot of things that we probably can't directly solve or address.
[8:18] Speaker 1: And of course the problem is a difficult one. Everyone
[8:20] Speaker 1: knows that it's a complex issue, a lot of reasons
[8:23] Speaker 1: why people leave. But I found the survey kind of
[8:27] Speaker 1: encouraging a certain way, because it convinced me there are
[8:30] Speaker 1: some things, very concrete, very simple, very practical things that
[8:34] Speaker 1: we can do right now that would go actually a
[8:37] Speaker 1: long way toward improving the situation.

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