Mass Attendance in Italy Abysmal....

... but not as bad as in Canada.

A new survey shows that around 22% of Catholics in Italy attend weekly Mass. I think the number in Canada is similar, if not slighty lower.

The study revealed some interesting points:

- 1/3 people who went to college/university attended Mass every week, and yet only 1/10 people in Italy have any post-secondary education. This means regular Mass attendees are, generally speaking, more educated than those who do not atttend Mass on a regular basis.

- The attendance rates are higher for people between the ages of 25-40. Generation of 1968 anyone?

- Priests were asked to guess the percentage themselves. Almost all of them chose figures extremely close to what was actually found in the survey.

On a related note, an article I just read discusses that the decline in vocations and Mass attendance always occurs parallel to an overal decline in the practice of the Sacrament of Confession. Gee, I wonder why?