In the largest survey of American Catholics ever conducted, vast numbers of the faithful blame Communion in the hand, extraordinary Eucharistic ministers, and homosexuality among the clergy as the most powerful reasons for lack of faith in the Eucharist.
On Tuesday, the Real Presence Coalition (RPC) released the results of its July 2024 survey, which sought to determine where U.S. Catholics place the blame for lack of faith in the Eucharist.
According to LifeSite News, “The survey, conducted with assistance from the national polling firm Public Opinion Strategies, received nearly 16,000 responses, including from 14,725 U.S. lay Catholics across every Latin diocese in the country. 780 responses were submitted by attendees of the U.S. bishops’ National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis.”
The Catholics surveyed were not the “Catholic in Name Only” types, where one typically expects to find those who have lost faith in the Eucharist. Instead, 97 percent of the respondents were Catholics, saying they attend Mass at least once weekly and believe in the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. The vast majority, 84 percent, identified themselves as Catholics “from infancy.”
Those devout Catholics left no doubt about what they feel is most responsible for declining faith in Catholicism’s most important Sacrament.
Of those surveyed, nearly 58 percent blamed receiving Holy Communion in the hand as the main culprit. Following closely on the heels of that finding, over 56 percent of respondents blamed priests for allowing public sinners “who obstinately reject Catholic teaching.” Over 70 percent blamed the use of extraordinary Eucharistic ministers – lay people – to distribute Holy Communion as a major or greatest reason for the diminished reverence toward the Sacrament.
64% of respondents believe the cessation of Ad Orientum, where the priest faces east, the direction from which Christ is to return is another significant loss of reverence; nearly 67% named the removal of altar rails as another reason. 63% of respondents either attend the TLM exclusively or at least periodically.
Perhaps not surprisingly, survey respondents also believe a return to the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) or a growth in the number of parishes offering TLM services would greatly benefit Eucharistic reverence.
However, even among Novus Ordo (the new order of the Mass promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1969) attendees, where Eucharistic ministers and Holy Communion are in hand, 65 percent said that they prefer to receive the Eucharist from a priest or deacon rather than an extraordinary minister.
“The RPC has published an open letter to the U.S. bishops calling on them to consider the survey findings ahead of their plenary assembly in November,” LifeSite News reports.