Fr. Carl Chudy of Fatima Shrine is looking for participants for a study of Disaffliated Catholics. Specifically, he would like to interview Catholic parent(s) or grandparent(s) who are affiliated and practice their faith to some extent more or less consistently. The second group would be their children 18-40 who have disaffiliated and no longer consider themselves Catholic or just no longer practice. But, they were brought up Catholic. Another term used in the research is "deconversion."
There have been studies done on disaffiliation. But what is not studied as well are the family dynamics in Catholic disaffiliation and how they understand what is going on, how they deal with it, and what they are learning from it. Fr. Carl hopes to focus squarely on family dynamics.
At the same time, there are other stakeholders besides the families. Catechists, youth ministers and others have something to say in relation to families. Fr. Carl would love catechists to share their own experience on this topic. They can participate remotely in the contact form of the website, or could make arrangements to sit down and talk about it.
For more information about the study click here.
The twitter feed for this project is @leavingchurch.