Many Australian Catholics who skip Mass still keep the faith, bishops’ study finds
A survey of 1,973 Australian Catholics who attend Sunday Mass irregularly found that many still pray, believe Jesus is the Son of God, and consider faith important. Researchers found that 74% of respondents attended Mass less than weekly; the report cautions that its self-selected sample may not represent all Australian Catholics. Common reasons for missing Mass included competing priorities, faith crises, family circumstances, liturgical concerns, difficulties with clergy, and loss of trust related to abuse and misuse of Church authority. Australian bishops urged dioceses to listen to people’s experiences and develop local pastoral initiatives to help them reconnect with the Church.
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A study commissioned by the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference found that many Catholics who attend Sunday Mass irregularly still pray and consider faith important. Respondents described a range of reasons for staying away, including competing priorities, doubts, family circumstances and negative experiences with clergy or the Church. 1 2
The report, Absent from the Table: Catholics in Australia Who Do Not Regularly Attend Sunday Mass, drew on an online survey of 1,973 self-selected adult Catholics conducted in 2024 and interviews with 67 people between March and July 2025. The report cautioned that the results are not fully generalisable to all Australian Catholics. 1 2
About two-thirds of respondents said faith was very important to them; 77% said Jesus is the Son of God, and 64% said they prayed regularly. On the Eucharist, 55% affirmed Christ’s real presence, while 24% viewed the elements as symbolic and 21% were unsure. 1 2
Overall, 74% attended Mass less than weekly: 19% said they went monthly, 36% occasionally and 19% not at all. Separately, a bishops’ national count estimated that 8.2% of Australian Catholics—about 417,000 people—attended church on a typical weekend in 2021. 1 2
Researchers identified 14 reasons for irregular attendance. The most prominent included Mass not being a priority, a crisis of faith, family or household issues, liturgical concerns, difficulties with priests or other clergy, and the misuse of power and authority in the Church. Respondents also cited abuse, especially clergy sexual abuse, as damaging trust. 1 2
Bishop Greg Bennet, vice president of the bishops’ conference and its delegate for pastoral research, said dioceses should listen to people’s accounts and shape local pastoral initiatives around their communities. He said some people were open to reconnecting with the Church. 1 2
Bishop Michael Kennedy urged Church leaders to ask not only why people had stopped attending, but also what they were seeking, how they had experienced the Church and what might help them feel they belong. 1 2
The relationship between Eucharistic participation, personal faith, and belonging in Catholic ecclesiology
In Catholic ecclesiology, Eucharistic participation, personal faith, and belonging to the Church are inseparable but not identical. Baptism establishes a real incorporation into Christ and his Church; faith makes that communion personally lived; and the Eucharist both expresses and deepens communion with Christ and with his visible Church. Receiving Communion is therefore not merely a private act of devotion: it signifies a shared faith and ecclesial unity, and calls the communicant to live accordingly.
Belonging to the Church is not measured only by whether a person receives Communion. Baptism incorporates a person into Christ and establishes a real bond with the Church; that bond exists even among baptized Christians who are not in full communion with the Catholic Church. Such communion is genuine, though incomplete, and Catholic teaching sees baptism and faith in Christ as gifts that draw Christians toward visible unity.
For Catholics, full ecclesial communion has visible dimensions: profession of the faith, sacramental life, and communion in the Church’s governance. The Eucharist is the supreme sacramental expression of that communion, so it is celebrated in relation to those bonds—not as an act detached from the Church’s common faith and life.
Personal faith matters, but it is not an isolated or self-invented belief. The International Theological Commission teaches that a person’s faith cannot be separated from the faith of the community celebrating the Eucharist. Eucharistic communion with Christ is lived within communion of faith with the Pope and the local bishop, and communicants share in the Church’s confession of faith.
This does not mean that every communicant must have perfect understanding or unwavering faith. Rather, the Eucharist presupposes a living orientation toward what the Church celebrates: Christ’s presence, the Church’s Trinitarian faith, and a life that seeks to conform to the sacrament. The Commission identifies rejection of essential Eucharistic or Trinitarian belief, serious failures of charity, and deliberate grave sin as incompatible with approaching Communion consistently.
Faith also needs to become visible in conduct. The Eucharist unites a person not only to Christ but to Christ’s members; communion with God and communion with other people belong together. For this reason, serious division and a notable lack of charity contradict the meaning of sharing the Lord’s table.
The Eucharist does not create every form of ecclesial belonging from nothing: baptism is already its foundation. Yet receiving Christ’s Body and Blood deepens and strengthens the baptized person’s belonging to Christ and to his people. In this sense the Eucharist is both sign and nourishment of communion—an outward sacramental expression of unity, and a means by which that unity is strengthened.
This also explains why Eucharistic communion cannot be treated as a tool for creating unity while disregarding whether unity is already present. The Church longs for all Christians to share the Eucharist, but holds that receiving it ordinarily presupposes full ecclesial communion. Admission of some non-Catholic Christians is possible only in specified exceptional circumstances and under defined conditions.
The relationship can be summarized this way: Baptism gives a real belonging; personal faith receives and lives that gift; and the Eucharist expresses and nourishes communion with Christ and his Church. These dimensions are distinct, but they belong together. Eucharistic participation without faith and a life oriented toward charity would contradict what the sacrament signifies; conversely, faith and baptism naturally call Christians toward fuller, visible communion.