What’s keeping young Catholics in the pews?
It’s no secret that many baptized Catholics stop practicing their faith at some point – often in early adulthood.
Recent data from the General Social Survey found that only about half of young adult respondents from 2018-2022 who were raised Catholic still consider themselves Catholic.
So what is it that leads some young adults to buck that trend – to embrace their faith and make it their own?
To answer that question, The Pillar talked to high schoolers attending the recent National Catholic Youth Conference in Indianapolis, asking them a simple question: What keeps you practicing the Catholic faith?
The answers from the teens were varied. For some it was parents encouraging them to go to Mass. For others, a vibrant youth group or Catholic high school was a major influence.
One common answer that was repeated again and again: having friends who are also seriously committed to the faith is vital. But finding those friends can be a challenge, the teens said.
The Pillar’s conversations with high schoolers at the National Catholic Youth Conference are below. They have been edited for length and clarity.
Miguel Torres from Gibsonburg, Ohio - public high school, junior
What really keeps me engaged in the faith is just the overall community that we built in our town, with the faith life and the emphasis on attending bigger experiences like NCYC or the National Eucharistic Congress, then we have our regular youth groups and summer youth camps.
We usually do a lot of town dinners, so after Mass, we usually make dinner as a community. We make barbecue dinners, we make Mexican dinners, just whoever is willing to cook that day.
These dinners and this community have helped me realize that there’s much more to life than just me. It has taught me that our life is also about helping others and helping create opportunities for others. And at the same time, you’re creating opportunities for yourself.
Then attending events like NCYC help me see that I’m not the only one maybe going through something.
Luke Paul from Massillion, Ohio - Catholic high school, senior
I grew up in a very Catholic household. My parents did a great job to raise me in the faith. I have five siblings. I also had a great uncle who was the priest of our parish, so I always loved helping out there, serving, and lectoring. And then once I started playing the saxophone, I liked playing during my school Masses and just whenever I could to help out at the parish.
My parents prioritized praying as a family. They always got me to Mass on Sundays and through their compassion, I was able to have this experience of love and they were able to show God’s love and compassion.
Once I got to high school, I was able to have the opportunity to go on mission trips. And doing the hands-on service work for those people in need really just opened my eyes and helped me to see that there are people in need and I had this desire to help them.
Then, when I got the opportunity to come to NCYC in 2023, I thought I knew God, but I now know that I’m going to continue to grow in my relationship with Him. And I really see God in Eucharist.
It does not always seem like the majority of young people are with the faith. It is never the first thing that they introduce themselves as. It just doesn’t seem cool.
Even going to a Catholic high school, it doesn’t always seem like people are always confident talking about God on the regular and praying and all that stuff. We have theology class, but outside of that, it doesn’t really show up in other conversations.
It is easy for anybody to say that they believe in God, but to actually do work and stuff to get out there and live it out it takes commitment and hard work and you have to be willing to put all of that in to pursue God.
Sophia Dowd from Avon, New York - public high school, junior
I was born and raised Catholic. I went to a Catholic elementary school from kindergarten to sixth grade, and my mom’s a principal there. My parents have helped a lot with raising me in the faith and getting me to go to a youth group with my church and that’s how I got into NCYC.
This is my second time going to NCYC. Seeing all the other teenagers here, together gives you a big sense of community and it keeps pushing you to keep going in the faith life. Staying engaged in the faith is a big part of my life. I like to keep it close to me as I go through everything and all of the challenges of high school.
The faith has always been a consoling and constant presence in my life. I go to youth group, I go to church. Having friends and people that surround you, that you can enjoy being with but are people that are there with you and calling you higher is so important. I have found those people in my youth group and it has given me a great sense of community. People fall away from the faith if you are not in the right community that is centered on the faith.
Through Catholic grade school and youth group, I have learned to pray. Every time I pray, I feel better. It gives me a good foundation for anything I’m struggling with and it always helps me. High school is pretty tough with stress and everything. Prayer is something you run to and it helps you out. It keeps me going. It’s a good foundation. Prayer always helps and it is a good stress reliever.
William Colburn from Rochester, New York - Jesuit high school, junior
I try to reach out to the local parish community to find different ways to get involved in church. I teach third grade Sunday School, and I teach confirmation class. I attend youth group regularly and I try to stay involved at school as well, since I go to a Catholic school. Just building friendships in Christ and growing together as a community has been huge for me.
Younger kids are smarter than people think and teaching them gives me a whole different perspective on things that I might not have considered before. Being able to teach them these ideas and concepts and introducing them to the faith is really special.
The Catholic faith has definitely set a foundation for me in my high school experience. Every week when I go to youth group, or every week when I have class, it’s almost like a checkpoint for me. I am able to reflect, see what I did right, see what might have gone wrong, then try again next week with the values of the Church in mind.
My high school has also been instrumental in my faith journey. I feel like through my parish, I really just knew stuff about Mass itself. I didn’t really know anything about Church history or a lot of saints or anything outside of Mass. Having a theology class at school and just having people whom I could trust and I could talk to about my faith and teach me about it has definitely helped.
It’s made me more confident in my faith and maybe more confident in being able to talk about it as well.
Sometimes it can be hard to find an outlet for your faith. I am blessed to have a youth group and go to a Catholic school, but not everyone has that opportunity. When you don’t have that opportunity, it is hard to feel that you have a community and you have a safe space. It almost might feel like you’re left out or you might even be left out by the Church so it demotivates you to stay true to yourself and to God.
Rachel Keeler from Naperville, Illinois - Catholic high school, junior
What keeps me engaged is my community and my friends. We have a really good youth group at our Church and really what keeps me engaged is going with them, and every week, I look forward to seeing them, and they push me to be better for myself and stay engaged with the Lord.
I feel so free to be myself at youth group. I feel free to talk about my highs, my lows, my sins, and feel no judgment and really relate to all of them on how we can be better. One thing that’s different from my youth group and other groups that I am part of is that we really do talk about everything, a lot of the bad stuff too. We understand that our relationship with God is not always a straight uphill path, we are going to find some bumps and really, we help each other work through it. We all hang out outside of church and youth group hours to build that connection.
I definitely think I’ll keep practicing the faith in college. I think that I have made friends that will last a lifetime. Even our friends that have gone away to college, we still talk to them. They tell us about their college campus ministry groups and how it feels like a sense of home when they’re away, and I feel like I’ll continue that because it’s a sense of community and home.
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