A drop in mass attendance and church membership among Roman Catholics in the United States that appeared in the months after the clergy sex abuse scandal broke two years ago may be reversing itself, according to the Gallup Poll Tuesday Briefing, a news service that summarizes the latest Gallup Poll findings.
The percentage of Catholics who said they had attended mass in the last week dropped between August 2000 and March 2002 (two months after the scandal first broke in Boston) from 52 percent to 47 percent, and then fell even further to 35 percent in February 2003, according to Gallup.
Since then, attendance has rebounded, showing 45 percent in November 2003, the most recent Gallup measurement.
The percentage of Catholics who said they were members of a parish had slipped from 80 percent in August 2000 to 68 percent in March 2002, but has climbed again to 75 percent as of November 2003, Gallup surveyors found.