UK Church Attendance Suffers as Stress Too Much for Weary Congregations

A report in the UK has revealed that the demands placed upon us every day are stopping people from attending services. Exhaustion after a stressful day at work, as well as increasing commitments at the weekends have meant that many people and even entire families cannot make it to church.

Roman Catholic families were the direct objects of the research, which claimed that modern life has simply gotten too hectic for them to attend Mass.

In addition to the stress levels in today’s society, it was also noted that the decreasing number of services taking places in the churches are also adding another barrier to more people gathering at the pews for their church services.

Catholic bishops gathered the information from 15,000 families in an effort to display accurately the reality of daily life for the country’s faithful.

The responses, however, certainly do not remain as simply a problem only evident in the Roman Catholic Church. In fact a majority of the denominations and churches in the UK have experienced a worrying trend in their congregational attendants of some kind.

The new study has caused a number of critics to point at the pressures faced by the modern day family, in which both the husband and the wife have to work to make ends meet.

The Telegraph newspaper reported that other concerns are also, "The experience of single parents in a church which shuns divorce is also related, as are those dealing with the effects of drug and alcohol abuse."

The bishops at the centre of the new survey revealed, "All that we have heard suggests that life at the family 'coalface' is often messy, rushed, stressful and draining.

"It seems that church involvement is either becoming one choice among many or simply less of a viable option. We heard in some dioceses that Mass times have changed and the number of Masses reduced. This makes it more difficult for some families to continue to attend regularly. Families who do go to Mass regularly are making tremendous sacrifices to do so."

The increasing pressure on families has also not been helped by a number of parishes that have been branded as "unfriendly".