Even if they didn’t attend mass last Sunday, many young Calgarians are still searching for meaning. Just not always inside church walls.

With the Calgary Catholic School (CCSD) Board of Trustees highlighting church attendance concerns, experts have said the trend isn’t unique to Calgary, but spirituality is budding in and away from the church across the globe.

During the Jan. 7 board meeting, CCSD Trustee Steve Chaplan said in his experience, outside of school-related mass and their work with Catholicism, many services are rife with empty pews, adding that if every parent and every child within the school system attended service regularly, churches city-wide would be full.

CCSD Director of Catholicism, John Wasch, called the lack of young people attending mass the lament of the church in North America.

“I have been at schools where priests have encouraged students to say, ‘please, do attend on Sunday.’ Within our schools, within our program of studies, we talk about regular reception of the sacraments and regular attendance at mass as being one of the foundational and fundamental things,” he said.

“Ultimately, this is the work of evangelization that we want people to attend mass. We are certainly trying to encourage them that this is a foundational part of celebrating, of growing in our own faith and fulfilling our obligation to our Creator, our God, who has made us.”

Wasch referenced an admittedly terrible analogy to eating vegetables, saying that not everyone wants to do that either.

“This isn’t something that just schools are working on. This is something that parishes are working on as well. A big part of the renewal within the Diocese of Calgary has been to emphasize to people the idea of there’s a home for you here, you are called, you matter and you belong and we want to see you, along with your children, on a regular basis in our parish.”

According to Dr. Steven Engler, a professor of religious studies at Mount Royal University, the increasing number of people leaving the church is not unique to North America, and the district acknowledging the declining numbers is not inherently a bad thing.

“It doesn’t signal anything negative; in fact, it signals something quite positive, which is just a realistic engagement with the fact that religion around the world, with exceptions, is in decline,” he said.

“People are leaving organized religions towards a more individualized spirituality. There’s a lot more ways to be non-religious or spiritual than there are ways to be Catholic.”

Meet young people where they’re at

When looking at deconversion, the term for people who’ve left the church, a key factor tends to be a lack of strong familial ties to religion, Engler said. It’s something that’s difficult for a school district to address.

“In a time of declining participation in the Catholic church, it’s harder to find adult models who show you what it’s like to live a Catholic life,” he said.

“Clearly, that’s a place where schools should be directly involved in showing the importance of religion in the continued life of older people.”

Focusing less on specific religious concepts sounds counterintuitive, but could also be key moving forward. Engler called it meeting young people where they’re at.

“This may seem like a shocking way to put it, but both the churches and the Catholic school system might consider focusing less on sacramental preparation and theology and more on things like knitting, because young people are looking for a deeper spirituality,” he said.

“It’s not like people have walked away from spirituality, they’ve got a different sense of spirituality.”

A key idea Engler teaches in his class is that the economy, social pressures and digital pressures are leading young people into a life that lacks meaning. He said that because people are searching for peace away from technology, interest in hobbies like knitting, reading and pottery continues to rise. 

“In Canada, the number of young people who say they’re spiritual is higher than the number of older people who say they’re spiritual. Religious groups in general are quite aware of this and should try to meet people at that level of spirituality,” he said.

“They need to offer a place of contemplation and a place of beauty or quiet for people to relax and focus on themselves and not at a superficial level like ‘interpret this text,’ but trying to dig into some deeper texts, from different traditions and explore deeper meaning.”

Engler said those kinds of ideas, which aren’t Catholic on the surface, are a great way to interact with people who are searching for spirituality.

Not empty, evolving: Former school teacher isn’t worried about Catholicism

Linda Dudar, a former Calgary Catholic teacher and principal and former Dean of Education at St. Mary’s University said that in her experience, young people leaving the church isn’t a concern.

“I work with various parishes and I think there are ebbs and flows to different initiatives. I’ve seen a number of initiatives as of late where young people have come together in my own parish and are doing charity work, praying together, celebrating in it,” she said.

“Perhaps it might look a little different, but the spirit and the willingness of reaching out to others is very strong. When you do have times where people can feel safe to express their faith, how Christ has worked in their life and how the power of the Holy Spirit has been very much a part of who they are, those are truly holy moments.”

In her work teaching school and post-secondary students, Dudar found that having a student embrace their spirituality cannot be forced and is similar to falling in love.

“If I said, ‘we’re gonna go and we’re gonna find somebody to fall in love with,’ how does that happen? When you talk about how you fall in love with your faith, you do that through time, you do that through knowledge and through conversations and experiences,” she said.

“I’ve had the opportunity to watch young people over the time that I worked at St. Mary’s that grew in their faith and said, ‘I want to become something that is more than what I had before I came here,’ and that was very special for them, it was special to watch.”

A student’s journey in religion or spirituality is their own. Dudar said that involving oneself in open conversation and experiences and then coming to an educated conclusion is the only way to foster belief, no matter the school or family dynamic.

Though she said Catholic roots run deep in Calgary, Dudar isn’t complacent, believing that Catholic education needs to be fought for.

“We never want to let our guard down and take it for granted that it will always be there, because in the blink of an eye, it’s possible that it can disappear,” she said.

“Our Catholic faith, that is not something that we’re afraid of or are nervous about. We’re saying if our churches aren’t full, then maybe it’s disappearing. But how we’re practicing, that may be looking different. It’s really important that we hold together, that we continue communicating, that we continue sharing our faith in different ways, through different cultures, through different experiences of people getting together.”

During the early January meeting, CCSD trustee Shannon Cook said the job of trustees is to advocate for public Catholic education. Not only its place in Alberta, but for the resources necessary to allow it to thrive.

“We, as a board and as this district, believe that part of student success is faith formation. We have a tremendous amount of parents who choose to bring their kids to Calgary Catholic because of the faith component that we offer and that’s our job as trustees, is to defend Catholic education, because it’s not a given,” she said.

Wasch said that beyond the high quality of K-12 learning, the reason parents choose Catholic education is often its lifelong impact.

“When we talk about student success, we sometimes limit ourselves to the things that we are capable of measuring on a summative assessment, things that were good on our report card. I think about the things that set people up to be successful in life and often it’s having a purpose,” he said during the meeting.

“Teaching from our faith lens gives us an opportunity to get young people to know that they’re created unique, that God loves them, that they have a purpose and their purpose is embedded in the service of others.”