How can the church appeal to the young? That’s a question on a lot of minds these days, and this piece from the Cleveland Plain Dealer looks at a few answers:

There are a lot of differences between the late Sunday afternoon Mass at St. Ambrose Catholic Church and the regular morning Masses throughout the Cleveland Catholic Diocese.

The first, of course, is the time: 5, which is preferred by young people who like to sleep in or have other activities such as sports teams during the day. The most significant difference is that teens and young adults are everywhere in the packed church in Brunswick.

They greet churchgoers. They lead the procession into the church. They read and bring the gifts for the priest to prepare the Eucharist. They help distribute Communion.

And they play in the band, which during the closing hymn encourages their peers to raise their arms and move to the music.

Congregations such as St. Ambrose are the future of the Catholic Church in the United States, say prominent church observers and researchers.

A historic shift in attitudes and practices — including a steep decline in Mass attendance — among Catholic youth raises concerns that the coming generations will be much less likely to be part of parish life, sociologists say.

One researcher predicts that the number of U.S. Catholics will decline by a third in the next generation; others predict smaller but significant drops if the church does not adapt to younger Catholics who have to be persuaded — rather than ordered — to attend Mass.

In a new book, “American Catholics Today: New Realities of Their Faith and Their Church,” four leading sociologists say young Catholics in an affluent society with little anti-Catholicism and in a church that has emphasized the development of individual moral consciences over rules need to be won over.

“They see it [the church] as only one of many possible means to help them meet their own needs,” write William D’Antonio and Dean Hoge of Catholic University of America, James Davidson of Purdue University and Mary Gautier of the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University.

What young Catholics want is to be meaningful participants rather than passive consumers in religious life, say youth workers in the region.

“Teens want to belong,” said the Rev. Andy Turner, associate pastor and youth minister of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Wickliffe. “We need to bring them to a sacred place.”

Since the 1960s, all churches have competed with massive social changes that encourage individual autonomy over respect for institutions.

Mainline Protestant denominations have lost millions of members, including many young people who dropped any religious affiliation. A Lilly Endowment-funded study of 500 Presbyterians ages 33 to 42 in 1989-90 found about half of the respondents were now “unchurched,” a result the study authors said could apply to other liberal Protestant denominations.

Catholic membership has increased from 46.2 million in 1965 to 64 million in 2005, remaining relatively steady at about 23 percent of the U.S. population.

Hispanic immigration is responsible for much of that growth. Sociologist Mark Chaves of Duke University says more than half of Catholics under 10 today are Hispanic.

What sociologists at a recent joint meeting of the Religious Research Association and the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion debated is whether young Catholics will stay in the church.

Sociologist Pierre Hegy of Adelphi University in Garden City, N.Y., predicts U.S. Catholics will decline by a third in the next generation as the distinctiveness of being Catholic disappears.

“Today, religion is a choice, a cafeteria choice,” he said.

You’ll find more at the link about the research behind all this.