Sacramental encounters will help people stay in Church, fulfill spiritual needs, apologist says

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 22:48:00 +0000
Religion

Mass at Arizona State University’s Newman Center chapel. / Credit: Courtesy of Father Bill Clements, director of ASU Newman Center

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Dec 18, 2025 / 17:48 pm (CNA).

Encouraging participation in Mass and making the sacraments more accessible can deepen fulfillment among Catholics and therefore help to keep Catholics in the faith, experts say.

A recent Pew Research Center report, “Why Do Some Americans Leave Their Religion While Others Stay?”, examined the religious switching of U.S. adults. It looked into the reasons why people stay or leave their childhood faith.

The report revealed many U.S. adults (35%) have left the religion they grew up in, but the majority of Americans (56%) still identify with their childhood religion. The survey reported that Catholics specifically continue to identify with the faith because “their religion fulfills their spiritual needs” (54%) and “they believe in the religion’s teachings” (53%).

To better understand why Catholicism fulfills spiritual needs and which teachings are most important in that process, “it’s crucial that we pay attention to what’s working,” Tom Nash, a contributing apologist for Catholic Answers, told CNA.

He highlighted a June Pew study that found practicing Catholics believe “having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ” (90%) and “receiving the Eucharist” (83%) are the most essential aspects of their faith.

The study “tracks with the Church’s teaching that the sacrifice of the Mass is ‘the source and summit of the Christian life’ (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1324), and provides insight regarding how the Church best fulfills someone’s spiritual needs and, relatedly, which teachings are most important,” Nash said.

“Through his one paschal sacrifice of Calvary — which encompasses his passion, death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven — Jesus has redeemed the world. In addition, Jesus enables us to offer anew sacramentally and partake of his one sacrifice in the Mass, which is the New Covenant Passover Communion sacrifice,” Nash said.

*Receiving the sacraments*

Since the majority of Catholics say the faith fulfills their spiritual needs and they believe in the religion’s teachings, it’s “best” to highlight what meets those aspects, Nash said. Specifically, he suggested making the sacraments accessible to Catholics.

“When we make sacramental encounters more available with Our Lord Jesus Christ, an increase in Sunday Mass participation will follow accordingly,” Nash said.

Not only is receiving the Eucharist at Mass “fundamental,” but so is “communing with our Eucharist Lord Jesus spiritually through Eucharistic adoration,” Nash said. This allows Catholics to have “a deep relationship with Our Lord; and they thus form the bedrock of Catholic belief, because they enable us to have increasing divine intimacy with Jesus, and through him with the Father and the Holy Spirit.”

“For practicing Catholics, those who are not participating in weekly Mass, and people in general to whom Christ’s Great Commission is also addressed, we need to ‘Open the doors wide to Christ. To his saving power,’” as St. John Paul II said in his inauguration Mass.

The best and most convenient way to “open the doors” is “to give Catholics and non-Catholics alike the opportunity to draw near to our Eucharistic Lord Jesus in Eucharistic adoration,” Nash said. “With the help of parish deacons and laymen, every parish in the country can open its doors for adoration several nights a week for two to three hours.”

This will allow people to “draw near to the Lord in intimate spiritual communion, whether with our Eucharistic Lord exposed in a monstrance or reposed in the tabernacle. And also open the doors on a morning or two to accommodate those who work evenings.”

“A lot of people — inactive Catholics and non-Catholics alike — are not likely to come to Mass. But if you give them an opportunity to quietly spend time with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament when it’s more convenient for them, they will draw near,” he said.

The sacrament of confession is also necessary. Nash suggests making confession “available five to 10 hours every week at every parish.”

“It’s not by accident that two of the most demonically oppressed priests in the last two centuries are renowned priest confessors: St. John Vianney and St. Padre Pio,” Nash said. “The devil knows the power of this great sacrament and acts accordingly in opposing it. In this way, we can ironically take a lesson from Lucifer, who despite his being ‘the father of lies’ (Jn 8:44) can’t help but tell the true in expressing his unvarnished hatred of Our Lord Jesus Christ and his Catholic Church.”

*Catholics must be ‘equipped’ and ‘formed’*

Among all former Catholics whom the new study looked at, it found “the most commonly cited reasons for leaving include no longer believing in the religion’s teachings, scandals involving clergy or religious leaders, or being unhappy about the religion’s teachings about social and political issues,” said Becka Alper, senior researcher at Pew Research Center, in a Dec. 17 interview with “EWTN News Nightly.”

The study reported most former Catholics are now Protestants. They reported they switched because they stopped believing in the Church’s teachings (46%), “assuming they understand them well to begin with, and because they now believe in the distinctive teachings of Protestantism of one type or another,” Nash said.

If Catholics are equipped “to explain the faith well in a joyful manner, we can stanch the hemorrhaging from the Church,” Nash said. This will also help “remove stumbling blocks for former Catholics and never-Catholic Christians regarding the nature of the Mass, Christ’s real presence in the Eucharist, and that he also provides us to encounter him in his merciful love through the sacrament of confession.”