That’s the serious, but provocative, question Rod Dreher posed in his blog this morning, springboarding off yesterday’s report from the Pew Forum:

Why do you think people leave the Catholic Church? We tend to accept the explanation that suits what we’d prefer to believe. In a short exchange on a combox yesterday, Daniel, who is a liberal Catholic, expressed his belief that these people get fed up with the dogmatism. I started to say that they wanted more substance, of a conservative sort, out of Christianity than they were getting at a Catholic parish, but then I realized that I really don’t know.

The sort of conservative/orthodox Catholic who is fed up with the liberalism, or absence of orthodox Catholic teaching and liturgical practice at his parish, is not likely to leave Catholicism, because he or she has a prior belief that the RC Church is the true church. Those conservatives who would leave (usually for an Evangelical church) are those who, for some reason or another, cease to believe the Church of Rome’s claims. I will concede that Daniel’s view is probably closer to explaining why Catholics leave than mine, but not quite for the reason he thinks. If you reject the dogma of the Catholic Church, why would you stay when we live in a society in which changing churches is common, and there’s little or no social penalty attached to it? Could it be that yes, they do reject the dogmatism, but it’s less a matter of, “…and that’s why I’m outta here!” than a shrug of indifference, along the lines of, “Well, it doesn’t really matter what one believes, so I’m going to find a church that suits my beliefs better?”

Again, I don’t know. Have there been any studies?

The Pew study tracked Protestants who left one Protestant church for another (e.g., Methodist to Presbyterian), but it didn’t track the same dynamic going on within Catholicism. It’s called parish-shopping. Most dioceses have one or more parishes known to the faithful as the “conservative” parish or the “liberal” parish, and Catholics to whom this sort of thing matters will cross parish lines to attend. I would think that as long as this dynamic exists within Catholicism, you are going to have fewer people leaving the Catholic Church, because they can find a place for themselves there.

Rod raises a very interesting point.

From my experience, most alienated Catholics have wandered away not because of dogma or doctrine, or even discipline. They’re willing to live with the sometimes difficult teachings of the Church, even the ones with which they don’t entirely agree. They’re even willing to forgive (after a lot of prayer and teeth-gnashing and soul-searching) the financial and sexual scandals that seize the headlines.

No, what drives people away is often something far simpler and, in a way, far more sinister.

It’s other people.

It’s the priest who condescendingly tells a grieving daughter, after her mother’s funeral, “Now you can really grow up. You know, we never truly become adults until after our parents die.”

It’s the deacon who refuses to anoint a baby at a parish baptism because the family arrived late.

It’s the pastor who won’t take the time to listen to a teenage girl’s problems because “it’s just hormones.”

These are real examples from people I know — and the people who experienced them walked away from the local parish and, eventually, the Catholic Church. There are many other factors that contribute to religious alienation, I know. But, like the woman at the well in last Sunday’s gospel, people are thirsty. What are we giving them to drink?

UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan has a heartfelt response to Rod Dreher’s posting, explaining why he’s remained Catholic. And there’s some great analysis of this situation over at Amy Welborn’s wonderful site, as well. Deacon Keith Fournier, meantime, places this development in the context of the New Evangelization.