Rupture

Cat-e-che-sis. It’s a Greek word meaning “to echo down” or “to resound.”

While 2026 brought major archdioceses (like Washington, D.C., Detroit, New York, and Philadelphia) reporting their highest numbers of adult baptism and confirmation classes in over a decade (Dias, 2026), for every adult convert, more than 8 cradle Catholics will disaffiliate or unaffiliation (Tevington, 2026).

If you haven’t heard the chatter surrounding the phenomenon of disaffiliation and unaffiliation among Catholics around the world, but particularly in North America, it’s time to start paying attention. The disaffiliated are those who have severed ties or connection with religious practice. It runs the gamut from cultural or ethnic believers, to spiritual but not religious, to agnostics or secularist. The unaffiliated identify as having no religion or as agnostic, atheist, secular humanist, non-theistic moralist, or apatheist.

For over 20 years, the religious landscape has been surveyed with rather startling results. According to the Pew Research Center (Hackett et al., 2025), the religiously unaffiliated are now the third largest religious category in the world, with religious unaffiliation outpacing growth in any religious group besides Muslims. Between 2010-2020, North America saw the steepest uptake in religiously unaffiliated, nearly doubling their numbers in10 years, and now comprising 30% of the overall population. These numbers are so staggering, that from 2025-2028, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) adapted, under an almost unanimous vote, a single mission directive which prioritizes evangelizing the religiously unaffiliated or disaffiliated (with particular focus on young adults and the youth) (USCCB, 2026). 

If we are paying attention to what is resoundingly being echoed down in the Catholic experience, it is one of rupture. While sad and harrowing, it is also good news. The honesty of rupture sets us free to wonder into areas, as Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) wrote, beyond “empirical confinement” (Ratzinger, 1987). The empirical trends listed above are so staggering, that while ecclesial reform is important, it does not harness the power needed to bring the renewal of the Gospel, which strikes heart and mind in such a compelling way, that men and women are willing to sell everything and follow Him.

This kind of renewal, Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) (1990), describes as ablatio, which is removal or taking away in order to open oneself, even beg, that God’s own creative action may be found. I believe that this is the work of catechesis: Removing the human encrustations of belief and practice that bind and blind us from the act of faith, which opens us to the power and might of the eternal and infinite, for which we all long.

What if catechesis began with what is ruptured, what creates discontinuity? Only in acknowledging the power, force, and presence of rupture, can we begin to work toward repair. Such is the gospel story of our salvation. It began in a garden, with the biggest rupture of all. And this we acknowledge is how we all begin: bent and in need of repair far beyond anything we are capable of accomplishing of our own accord.

*The author would like to acknowledge the work of Brad Bursa’s article on Pope Benedict and reform in key insights for this blog.

References

Bursa, B. (n.d.). Benedict XVI on authentic reform. Retrieved from https://stpaulcenter.com/posts/benedict-xvi-on-authentic-reform

Hackett, C., Stonawski, M., Tong, Y., Kramer, S., Shi, A. F., & Fahmy, D. (2025, June 9). Religiously unaffiliated population change (Ch. 4). Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/06/09/religiously-unaffiliated-population-change/

Tevington, P. (2026, June 5). Vance is among 1.5% of Americans who have converted to Catholicism. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/06/05/vance-is-among-1-5-of-americans-who-have-converted-to-catholicism/

Ratzinger, J. (1987). Principles of Catholic theology: Building stones for a fundamental theology (M. F. McCarthy, Trans.). Ignatius Press.

Ratzinger, J. (1990, September 1). Una compagnia sempre riformanda [A company always reformed] [Keynote address]. Meeting per l'amicizia fra i popoli, Rimini, Italy.

Dias, E. (2026, March 26). Roman Catholic churches see a surge of new converts. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/26/us/catholics-converts.html

United States of Conference of Catholic Bishops. (2026). The Mission and Work of the Conference. Retrieved from https://www.usccb.org/about/mission-directive