My fellow blogger, Mike, over at the dorcatholic.blogspot.com, has just posted the latest numbers for weekend Mass attendance in the DOR. The latest numbers show a continuing and precipitous decline. The DOR’s weekend Mass attendance has now fallen to 80,710. This is down from 84,000 in 2008 and 108,000 in the year 2000. Thus, the DOR has now lost 25.3% of weekend Mass attendees in the last eight years. This is an average loss of 3.58% a year.

The overall Catholic population in the DOR is about 350,000. The 80,710 figure means that only about 23% of Catholics attend weekend Mass in the DOR. This is a dramatically lower attendance figure when compared to Mass attendance in the rest of the United States. The latest figures from the CARA Center at Georgetown University show that, on average, 36% of Catholics nationwide attend weekend Mass. This number is up from 33% in the year 2000.

In other words, while Mass attendance in the DOR has been nosediving for the last eight years, national trends actually show an increase in participation.

Recently I posted a story about declining Mass attendance in Irondequoit, in which the decline was explained away as being the result of the secularization of society. If this is true, then it can only mean that the Rochester area is significantly more secularized than the rest of the United States.