Did Vatican II Cause the Catholic Church to Decline?

This is a complicated question because there are so many variables which are potentially relevant. To simplify the issues, just three aspects will be considered:

Did Vatican II cause Mass attendance to decline?

Did Vatican II cause priestly vocations to decline?

Did Vatican II cause a decline in the number of religious sisters?

1. Did Vatican II Cause Mass Attendance to Decline?

It is clearly the case that fewer Catholics attend Sunday Mass now than they did at the time of Vatican II (1965). But is that a decline which was caused by Vatican II?

There is some evidence that Mass attendance was already declining before Vatican II. Stephen Bullivant’s, Mass Exodus (2019) notes that in parts of Italy Mass attendance had dropped to around 50% by 1961. He also refers to a 1960 report about Irish Mass attendance in England, which was considered so explosive that it was suppressed for 50 years.

Christopher Ferrara (et al.) in The Great Façade notes that French Mass attendance fell from 27% in 1965 to 4.5% in 2009. But wasn’t the pre-Vatican II figure of 27% already representing decline as compared to pre-World War II figures, and as compared to Italian Catholics 51% Mass attendance?

We also know that Pope Pius XII recognized that there were issues with Mass attendance in the 1950s. One of the objectives of his 1956 reform of the Easter Week liturgy was to make the liturgies more accessible, so that more people would attend.

If there were concerns and issues about Mass attendance prior to Vatican II, then Vatican II can hardly have been “the” cause of decline. But could it have been a contributory cause?

To explore that question we can look at Protestant worship. If Vatican II were partially or wholly to blame for decline in Catholic Mass attendance, then we would expect to see Protestant Church attendance remaining unaffected over the same period of time. Bullivant’s book indicates that the opposite occurred. In the decade after Vatican II, Catholic Mass attendance dropped by a third, but it dropped by a half in Protestant Churches.

Christian-Reasearch.org has analyzed the data in England from 1901 to 2007. It shows Catholic Mass attendance rising until Vatican II, unlike the Church of England which was already declining from 1930. After Vatican II Catholic attendance starts to fall, broadly tracking an increasing decline in Church of England attendance. Did Vatican II destroy rising trends in Catholicism, or was there some other factor already at work in society which affected both Catholic and Church of England attendance, albeit impacting on different timescales?

The data is complicated, and the issues can be argued in opposite directions.

2. Did Vatican II Cause Priestly Vocations to Decline?

CARA data shows that in 1970 there were 419,728 priests worldwide, and there were 414,065 in 2018. That represents a roughly 1% drop in absolute numbers over almost fifty years.

However, as the Catholic population has doubled in that period, the data also indicates a halving of the number of priests per Catholic. Was this caused by Vatican II?

Data analysis of English Diocesan statistics (provided by The Latin Mass Society) shows that the number of priests per Catholic (in England and Wales) was 1 per 268,000 in 1950. Each year after 1950, the proportion of priests per Catholic dropped, although it stabilized somewhat during the Pontificate of John Paul II. Even though raw numbers of ordinations continued to rise until the time of Vatican II, ordinations were already declining from 1950, when compared to a faster rising Catholic population.

A similar pattern is also evident in the Pillar’s data from the Vatican’s Annuario Pontificio. It looked at the raw data of ordinations from 17 of the world’s largest dioceses, and it found that between 1950 to 1961 there was a 28% decline in ordinations.

We also know that the bishops at Vatican II were talking about an already existing problem of declining vocations. For example, one of Marcel Lefebvre’s comments at Vatican II referred to “regions where vocations have dropped” (I Accuse the Council).

Vatican II can hardly be a cause of a problem which began before the Council met. But could it be a contributory factor to worsening the problem of priestly vocations?

The statistics are complicated, and some even show growth since Vatican II. CARA reports that in 1970 there were 4,622 diocesan ordinations worldwide, but since 1995 there have been around 6000 per year. The number of seminarians also seems to have doubled from 24,183 in 1975 to 56,345 in 2018. But this data is problematic, as it does not properly cover the period of Vatican II.

One issue that leaps out from the data is that there is a factor of regionality. Decline in priestly numbers is a “Western” problem, affecting Europe, America, etc. In the USA the number of priests has almost halved from 59,192 in 1970 to 34,923 in 2018. The Times reports similar data for England and Wales, with a decline from 7,900 priests in 1965 to 4,900 in 2014.

Continental Europe shows even steeper declines. A 2010 article by Eleanor Beardsley reports that the French Church had around 41,000 priests in the mid-1960s. That dropped to 15,000 by 2010, and even that figure included more than 1000 visiting priests from Africa. At the time of her article there were approximately 800 priests per year dying in France, and approximately 100 ordinations per year.

Yet this decline in Europe and America is offset by increases in the numbers of priests in Africa and Asia. This is why, overall, there is only a 1% difference in the number of priests worldwide between 1970 and 2018.

If Vatican II was contributing to causing a decline in priestly vocations, we would expect to see decline in all the countries which implemented Vatican II. But that is not what the data shows. Decline is a feature of Western countries. This suggests that (probably) there must be other factors affecting priestly numbers, besides, or instead of, Vatican II.

3. Did Vatican II Cause a Decline in the Numbers of Religious Sisters?

The CARA data shows that there were just over 1 million Catholic nuns and religious sisters in 1970, and that there were 641,661 in 2018. UCatholic adds a demographic note that there are more nuns in USA over the age of 90, than there are under the age of 60. This data indicates decline, but is it a decline caused by Vatican II?

It is tempting to look to Orthodoxy to try and make some comparisons. Milica Bakić-Hayden reports that in Serbia the number of Orthodox nuns increased by around 20% (143 nuns) between 1990 and 2003. Orthodox nuns in USA have increased over the last 30 years, with the Atlas of Orthodox Monasteries reporting 265 nuns in 2016. A small increase in Orthodoxy is certainly a contrast to the enormous decrease in American Catholic sisters, from 160,000 in 1970 to 42,000 in 2018.

The data from Mount Athos also suggests growth in Orthodox monks. In 1905 there were 7,553 monks and that decreased to 1,145 in 1971. But whilst Catholic numbers have declined since 1971, Mount Athos has increased to around 2000 monks today.

Do increases in Orthodoxy suggest that there is a specifically Catholic decline in religious vocations which can be attributed to Vatican II?

Possibly, but not necessarily. The data from Orthodoxy may just be a cultural effect or an issue of regionality. For example, the number of Catholic religious sisters are growing in Africa. ASEC (The African Sisters Education Collaborative) reports a 20% increase in the number of sisters from 2012 to 2018, rising from 31,713 to 37,905. It is Western data which is showing the enormous declines.

Could Vatican II be to blame for undermining Catholic vocations in America and Europe, while it is positively contributing to vocations in Asia and Africa? Or is there some other negative factor at work in Europe and America, and some other positive factor fostering vocations in Asia and Africa?

Pope Pius XII provides an interesting insight into this question. In his 1954 encyclical Sacra Virginitas, he tells us that religious vocations were already in decline (from his perspective in Italy). One of his motives for writing the encyclical was to extol celibacy, to try and reinvigorate vocations to religious life.

What does all this mean? If Pius XII was correct about declining vocations in 1954, then a Vatican II in 1965 cannot be the cause of declining vocations. The data from Orthodoxy raises interesting questions about whether Vatican II could have made an already existing problem worse. But if that were so then we would expect to see similar patterns of decline everywhere that Vatican II was implemented. But that is not what the data shows.

4. Why Is This Such a Difficult Question to Answer?

The question of Vatican II’s impact invites the use of statistics in an answer. But in order to make valid statistical comparisons, there needs to be a degree of stability in the contexts of the data sets. During the twentieth century, there have been enormous cultural and social changes. So it is difficult to isolate, and properly account for, all the differing factors which could be at work in the data.

For example, declining numbers of women entering religious life coincides with increased opportunities for women in education and employment. Is that a coincidence or are there relevant causal factors at work? Declining vocations also correlate (somewhat) with declining birth rates. Is that a coincidence, or are there relevant issues which need to be factored into a consideration of Vatican II?

There are also clearly regional factors affecting the data. We know that there is a “Western” effect which we might loosely refer to as Secularism. It is corrosive of all religions. Even Islam has less observant followers in Europe. At the time of Vatican II around half the world’s Catholics lived in Europe. Even today, 20% of Catholics live in Europe and they are ministered to by 40% of the world’s priests. If there is some kind of Europe-effect corroding all religions, then it could be expected to have a significantly destructive impact upon Catholicism, purely because large numbers of Catholics happen to be living where the effect is occurring.

Maybe Vatican II exacerbated the Europe effect? Maybe it didn’t? Maybe Catholicism would have withstood the Europe-effect better without Vatican II? But maybe it wouldn’t?

Ultimately these are extremely complicated questions, and the complexities of the underlying issues make it hard to assess Vatican II’s impact in a reasonably fair and rationally valid way.

5. Conclusion: Did Vatican II Cause Decline?

Vatican II cannot be the (single) cause for declining Mass attendance, or for declining priestly vocations, or for declining numbers of religious sisters. This is because there is evidence that decline was already beginning to affect each of those issues before Vatican II took place.

Could Vatican II have been “a” (contributory) cause which exacerbated or accelerated decline? Possibly yes, possibly no. The evidence is so complicated, and there are so many potentially relevant variables, that it is difficult to reach a definitive conclusion.

Many people have many opinions about Vatican II. But without a significant investment of resources to try and evaluate Vatican II’s impact in a statistically valid way, rather than just anecdotally, opinions will remain merely conflicting conjectures.

It is surprising how hard it is to answer a question about Vatican II’s impact. One of the key issues for modern Catholicism has got to be the question of whether the Church needs more, or less, of the Vatican II “style.” How can the Church know what direction to go in, if it does not have a properly evidenced assessment of the impact of Vatican II upon which to base a decision?

In the meantime, there is one clear and definitive conclusion which is apparent, viz., that this is such a complicated question that people need to be cautious in advancing opinions about it. Opinions will inevitably arise, but when matters lack a definitiveness, rational people advance their opinions with the humility and open-mindedness appropriate to the unresolved nature of the complexities.