It is a long-accepted finding in the sociology of religion that, on average, women are “more religious” than men are: they attend church services more often, pray more often, and are more orthodox in their beliefs. Over the past decade or so, however, evidence has been mounting that, among the youngest generation of Catholics, this is no longer true.  In fact, the opposite may be the case. (D’Antonio, Dillon, and Gautier, American Catholics in Transition, 2013; Schwadel, “Changes in Americans’ Strength of Religious Affiliation, 1974-2010.” Sociology of Religion 74(1) 2013:112).

An analysis of the General Social Surveys (GSS) from 2002-2012 shows that the likelihood of exiting Catholicism altogether is greater among young adult Catholic women than it is among Catholic men their age.  While older women are more likely than older men to have remained Catholic, for Millennial Catholic women the difference is non-existent, or even slightly reversed.  A similar reversal does not occur among Protestant or Millennial women, who are still more likely to stay in their childhood faith tradition than their male age peers are. 

One measure of religiosity is frequency of attendance at religious services. According to the GSS, Millennial Catholic women are now slightly less likely than their male peers to attend Mass.  (See also Schwadel, 2013:112; D’Antonio, Dillon, and Gautier, 2013)  This, again, is not the case for older Catholics, nor for Millennial Protestant women.

Another way to measure religiosity is how frequently a person prays privately.  GSS data show that Millennial Catholic women are still more likely than men their age to report praying often and desiring to grow closer to God.  The gap between the genders in prayer, however, has narrowed, and is only one-third as wide as the gender gap in older age cohorts.  And all Millennial Catholics, male and female, are much less likely than older Catholics to say that they pray “often.”

The generational decline in religious affiliation and attendance that occurred among Millennial Catholic women was not replicated in their reporting of spiritual experiences such as feeling close to God, feeling guided by God, etc.  In many of these experiences, in fact, it was the Catholic males who showed the more pronounced generational declines.  Similar changes in gender discrepancies do not occur among Protestants.

A final measure of religiosity is the strength of a respondent’s belief in the tenets of his/her faith.  Among young adults who remain Catholic, fewer than a quarter accept the Church’s teaching authority on moral issues such as divorce, contraception, abortion, homosexuality, and nonmarital sex (D’Antonio et al., American Catholics Today: New Realities of Their Faith and Their Church, 2007:98-101; the Barna group, “New Barna Study Explores Current Views on Abortion.” 2007, and “The Spiritual Journeys of Young Catholics” 2013, both available on the web.).  Only 11 percent feel that having a celibate male clergy is important, and only 26 percent say that the teaching authority of the Vatican is.  In general, Millennial women are more likely than male Catholics their age to give the heterodox response to these issues.

These trends have ominous implications for the future of Catholicism in the U.S.

• The alienation of the youngest cohort of Catholic women from formal religious practice is likely to impact negatively on Church marriages and baptisms, as well as on the religious socialization of subsequent generations.  It is also likely to mean that, for the foreseeable future, fewer women than men may be entering Church service as religious sisters.
• Millennial Hispanics now form the majority of U.S. Catholics in their age cohort.  Hispanic migration is the primary reason why the overall number and percentage of U.S. Catholics has not decreased.  But Millennial Hispanics are also assimilating to the larger American culture: Millennial Hispanic women are no longer significantly more likely than men to attend Mass, pray or report religious experiences – and they are significantly more likely to agree with the rest of Americans their age that homosexuality is OK.  Relying on Hispanic Catholics to replace non-Hispanic Catholic defections would seem to be a temporary reprieve at best for American Catholicism.

No denomination can long survive if it is attractive to only one generation.  Neither can a denomination survive if it does not arouse in women a sufficient commitment to pass the faith on to their children.  It is by no means certain, however, that the Church could suddenly reverse this alienation by simply deciding to ordain women as priests – or even consecrate them as bishops.  First of all, ordained women in other denominations often find themselves confronted by a “stained glass ceiling” – assigned to declining or impoverished congregations with little likelihood of professional advancement.  Secondly, ordaining or consecrating women into sacramental ministry would alienate the conservative Catholics who still support the Church, since the ordination of women is a polarizing issue. 

A more successful strategy is likely to be a concentrated effort to ameliorate the many problems women face in their day-to-day lives: low wages, lack of child care, rape and other forms of violence, harassment in varying forms, etc.   These problems especially affect immigrant and undocumented women, who often find more help in evangelical churches than they do among Catholics.  The Church needs to take, and be seen to take, active, persistent, and radical steps in every parish that reach out specifically to single young adult women, immigrant and undocumented women, single parents, widows and divorced women, women artists, musicians and writers – a whole second gender that has so often been neglected by the male hierarchy in the past.