Bendigo priest says attendance survey may not be truly accurate

Administrator of the Cathedral cluster parishes in Bendigo, Father Brian Boyle, oversees the Sacred Heart Cathedral, Kangaroo Flat's St Monica's and St Joseph's in Quarry Hills.

Over the month of May the Catholic Church has conducted head counts to get an idea of how many people are attending mass across the nation.

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Father Boyle said while there was a slight decrease in those attending church service compared to this time last year, the numbers should be taken with a grain of salt.

"I would be cautious about what this reveals because it may not be a reliable indicator of people's practice," he said.

"Or necessarily a reliable indicator of their faith but we do it because we are asked to do it."

Father Boyle said the tallied totals from the three churches showed two had seen a drop off in attendance while one had managed to retain a steady figure of people attending services.

"I have been through the figures that we submitted and I offered some general observations," he said.

"I have compared the May 2023 figures with the May 2022 figures of the same mass count over 12 months of the three parishes.

"I would think in the Cathedral parish ... my impression is that there has been some overall decline in numbers attending in those 12 months although the main mass at 11am on Sunday seems to be fairly consistently well attended."

Father Boyle said the same decline was noticed in the Quarry Hill parish but there was a steady attendance at Kangaroo Flat.

He said a potential reason for the drop off was the lingering issue surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic which had a "huge impact" on the number of church-goers but there had been a rebound in attendance the since the pandemic has stabilised.

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Father Boyle said another factor to take into consideration was the lack of church attendance did not necessarily indicate level of faith in the Greater Bendigo area or the number of people who go the mass during the peak Easter and Christmas periods.

"If you look at the latest census from the Australian Government you had a very significant increase in the number of people in the census form who put down that they had no religion," he said.

"It does not mean they have got no faith that simply means for a whole reasons, again I feel that should be treated with caution, they are not prepared to say that they have a religious affiliation.

"I think that a significant number of people while they may not attend mass regularly would still see themselves as persons of faith and pray on their own."

In the 2021 census 38.9 percent of respondents identified as having no religion, a sizeable jump from the 2016 and 2011 census where 30,1 and 23.1 percent of the population marked no religion, respectively.

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