By Carl Chudy, SX

The Catholic Disaffiliation of the Xaverian Missionaries USA is one experience of many encounters and dialogue beyond the boundaries of the Catholic Church and beyond the borders of institutional religion itself. It was born of two realities of dialogue: the dialogue among religious traditions in the context of the United States and the religious-secular dialogue initiated with our confreres of the United Kingdom in 2013.

The interfaith dialogue work in the United States was initiated on several levels. The first was the establishment of the Metrowest Interfaith Dialogue Project, which involves six religious leaders and their communities, Muslim, Sikh, Baha’i, Christian, Jewish, and Hindu. In this dialogue project, and in others we are involved, all traditions have fluid borders of those who enter, remain, and depart, particularly in the Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In listening to stories of departure, I found that the psychological and theological significance of leaving religion behind is as extraordinary as those who enter them.

The religious-secular dialogue initiated in 2013 with secular humanism, atheism, agnosticism, and the nonreligious of many different worldviews, revealed some of the places those who disengage from the religious practice. I met many who left Catholicism in these secular niches. Listening to their stories also helped broaden the larger framework of encounters and dialogue transcending traditional religious borders.

The Catholic Disaffiliation Project was born while engaging in studies in interfaith dialogue. There I found that interreligious dialogue, particularly in the US context and throughout much of the northern hemisphere, benefits when it includes secular voices and those who shape their faith identities around multiple belongings. My thesis then was a local research project on attempting to understand Catholic disaffiliation within the context of Catholic families where their children were formed in the faith and then left Catholic religious practice at a certain point. I sought to answer three questions: why they go, what they take from their former religious tradition, and where they find their new spiritual niche.

This missionary project continues as I curate stories of departure from the Catholic practice of faith. Recently we submitted a report for the Synod of the Church 2021-2024 of those who left Catholicism, as well as a possible framework to understand their experiences. In addition, we hope to provide future gatherings and further studies that enlighten how we know what it means to be a church in a post-secular culture.