Catholic News Service
Over the past year or so, I’ve been studying the decline in Sunday Mass attendance in the Catholic community. An old friend who knew what I was up to recently sent me a letter indicating that he had read an article I wrote based on “exit interviews” with nonchurchgoing Catholics in the Diocese of Trenton, N.J.
My friend mentioned that one of his philosophy professors years ago at the University of Notre Dame used to say that “Catholics have lost the sense of what is at stake in life,” and my friend interpreted his professor to be saying that “maybe a large number of Catholics may not be spending eternity in God’s presence.”