No one saw the COVID-19 pandemic coming, and even less could anyone have predicted the tremendous impact it would have on our daily lives. Even the landscape of Catholic liturgical life shifted dramatically with the spread of COVID-19. It began here and there, with Masses canceled or attendance limited, and it rapidly spread into an almost universal suspension of the Sunday obligation. The faithful all over the world resorted to watching Mass online, as a best-we-can-get simulacrum of attending in person. What was originally intended as a brief pause turned into an incredibly lengthy suspension of the Mass, other sacraments and parish life in general. Even when Masses started to become public again, there were still restrictions on attendance, requirements to wear masks and other such measures.

The Study

Vinea Research conducted a study in February 2022 to examine the effects of the pandemic on the faith life and well-being of Catholics. Vinea Research founder Hans Plate learned that pastors were seeking this information and quickly decided to undertake the study.

The study was conducted by way of an online survey that was administered to more than 1,500 self-identified Catholics who went to Mass at least once per year. This large sampling represented a wide swath of the Catholic world, from dioceses all across the United States.

Why was the study done in the first place? What prompted it? Wouldn’t it be reasonable to expect everything to go “back to normal” post-pandemic, including Mass attendance and the faith lives of Catholics?

The study was conducted to provide information for pastors, to assist them in serving their flocks following the pandemic. Unfortunately, an extended period of livestreamed Masses and the suspension of the Sunday obligation has had a tremendously detrimental effect on many Catholics, particularly in regards to regular Mass attendance, but also prayer life, family conflict, faith-related attitudes and more.

Assisting Pastors

One of the questions that must have been on every pastor’s mind served as a sort of guiding principle for Vinea Research’s study: “Will they come back?” People had grown accustomed to staying at home, watching Mass from the comfort of their living rooms. Were they hungering for the Eucharist? Were they yearning for communal liturgical life? Did they even know what they had been missing all this time?

The study’s stated purpose was to assist pastors in knowing how the pandemic has affected their congregations so that they can better serve them going forward. The survey’s results revealed areas that will become battlegrounds for pastors, such as emphasizing the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist and the importance of the Sunday obligation and participation in all the sacraments. Some points were remarkably encouraging, including half of those surveyed stating that their overall faith in God is better than it was before the pandemic, and that they were more grateful to God overall.

“It’s encouraging to see that even in the midst of suffering, Catholics did not lose their faith in God,” Plate said.

The survey also examined how financial contributions were impacted, and how parishioners felt about the way their parish handled the pandemic.

Of course, the landscape of the post-pandemic world is continually changing, on a weekly and even daily basis. But even still, this study’s results can provide important insights for priests (and others) on how to navigate going forward.

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Additional information

For more information on Vinea Research and to access the full report, visit https://www.vinearesearch.com/media.

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Interview with Hans Plate

Plate recently spoke to The Priest about this study and unpacked a little bit of the meaning behind the results and how priests can use the results in the life of their parishes.

The Priest: Tell me a little about yourself and Vinea Research.

Hans Plate: I am a cradle Catholic, a married father of five daughters. I’m originally from Peru but have lived in the United States since I was a toddler. Out of college, over 25 years ago, I started working for a market-research agency in the healthcare sector. That is where I learned the trade and the business value of market research and customer insights. I formed Vinea Research almost nine years ago to take the tools, techniques and strategic mindset I learned in the business world, and to apply them to Catholic organizations. We serve Catholic apostolates, Church leadership, social advocacy groups and parishes.

TP: What prompted this February survey on the effects of COVID-19 on Catholics?

Plate: I have a pastor friend who serves a parish near where I live. He’s familiar with the work I do and suggested that priests could use the information on the impact COVID has had on the faithful. Additionally, I had seen various reports and interviews the last couple of years on this subject. I felt we could approach the question a little differently, so we had more conversations with priests, fielded a pilot version of the survey and then fielded the full study with Catholics across the country.

TP: Tell me a little about the methodology. How were the 1,500 Catholics selected? How was the survey conducted?

Plate: We worked with one of the largest opt-in consumer panel providers in the country, Dynata. We have worked with them in our commercial business and were confident in their ability to find qualified respondents. We designed an online survey that was sent to panelists. The first part of the survey contained screener questions designed to find the respondents we were looking for: at a minimum, people had to identify as Catholic and attend Mass at least once per year. However, we largely focused on more frequent Massgoers — nearly two-thirds of our sample went to Mass weekly or more often before COVID-19.

TP: Were the results what you expected?

Plate: Some of the findings were encouraging and some were concerning. It was good to see how Catholics’ faith in God remained strong despite their circumstances. Nearly 4 out of 10 say their lives are overall worse today than they were before COVID-19. Three in 10 say it’s the same, and 3 in 10 say it’s better. However, faith in God remained either the same or got better during this time. Nearly half (44%) of those who say their lives today are worse off indicated that their faith in God is better.

The concerning finding centers around future physical Mass attendance and reasons given for not expecting to attend Mass. To set this up, we asked respondents to assume a four-weekend month in the summer of 2022. Two percent of previous weekly-plus Massgoers do not expect to attend or observe Mass at all by the summer of 2022. Additionally, 9% will attend or observe Mass, but not fewer than four weekends (also in the summer of 2022). The majority of previous weekly-plus Massgoers, 89%, expect that they will attend or observe Mass all four weekends. However, only 61% will be physically present all four weekends, while 11% will observe all Masses. In a separate line of questioning, we asked respondents who do not expect to be physically present at Mass why that is. Forty percent of these respondents gave only convenience or preference reasons (as opposed to health and safety reasons) such as enjoying watching Mass from home, [it] being easier than driving, not needing to dress up, etc. This speaks to a lack of understanding of why it’s important to be physically present at and participate in the sacrifice of the Mass.

TP: How do you hope this information will be helpful to pastors?

Plate: I hope that pastors take two key points away from this research. First, I would encourage continued streaming of Masses. Some parishioners have legitimate health and safety issues or concerns that keep them home. Perhaps with this group, raise awareness of the safety measures in place. For those watching from home for convenience reasons, streaming is a lifeline. My concern is that if streaming were eliminated for these parishioners, many would completely disengage. This leads to the second takeaway.

These findings point to a clear need to do more/better catechesis on the Mass — what it is and why the lay faithful need to be physically present. That’s a long-term need. In the short-term, to those parishes who are streaming, use this medium to give a warm invitation to parishioners to return to church for Mass. Incorporate this into the opening words, the homily or the closing announcements, also giving them bite-sized teachings on the importance of being physically present. Additionally, prepare materials on the Mass and email them to all parishioners and include them in the bulletins. Or create short video series on the Mass, or use any that have already been developed.

PAUL SENZ writes from Oklahoma.

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Pastoral Concern

Perhaps the most troubling results in the survey pertained to the question of future Mass attendance, and the reasons given for not intending to attend at least weekly. As stated in the report, “We believe that too many Catholics fundamentally do not understand or appreciate the Mass.” This is a remarkable conclusion to reach, but it certainly follows from the data. Of those who stated they did not intend to attend Mass in person, a whopping 40% cited reasons of personal preference or convenience, including stating that watching a livestreamed Mass is easier than driving to church, or that there is no need to dress up for a livestreamed Mass. This is a tremendous pastoral problem, and one that needs to be addressed head-on and immediately.

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