Scott Louque grew up indoctrinated in the Roman Catholic Church. After 22 years in the faith, the agricultural business senior abandoned his upbringing looking for something more.American Religious Identification Survey shows the population of Catholics in Louisiana has decreased 16 percent compared to survey figures gathered in 1990.”Younger people by and large are more likely not to identify with their parents’ religion,” said religious studies assistant professor Michael Pasquier said. “It isn’t a rule, and it isn’t that they won’t start calling themselves Catholic 20 years from now.”Pasquier said younger people not always identifying with the Catholic church and older members passing away can cause some shift in number of Catholics.This generational gap, along with migration of citizens out of Louisiana for economic reasons, has played a major part in this reduction of number of Catholics in the state, Pasquier said.Louque converted from Catholicism to a non-denominational faith when he was 22 .”I went through confirmation and everything but was never able to get a lot of questions answered,” Louque said. “There is only a handful of people I would call devout Catholics that actually lived what they believed.”Brad Fossier, biology senior, said investigating what he really believes made him realize that tradition makes the Catholic experience more real to him. He argues Catholics should embrace the more traditional aspects because they find logical reason for many of the traditions in the church.A 2009 study conducted by Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate for the National Religious Vocation Conference shows a growing trend of priests coming through the Roman Catholic order being more ethnically diverse as compared to the past.The study surveyed 4,000 Catholics in training or in final vows in U.S. religious communities since 1993. The study found Catholics training to join an order are composed of 58 percent white, 21 percent Hispanic, 14 percent Asian and 6 percent black people. This compares to the current 94 percent white composition of the current religious order.Pasquier said the more diverse makeup of those in training in the Catholic Church is based largely on new immigrant populations coupled with an ongoing priest shortage.The shortage of priests varies from diocese to diocese, but there is definitely a shortage priests in this country, said Father Than Vu pastor at Christ the King Catholic Center on campus. “There are some  diocese where the percentages of foreign-born priests is as high as almost 50 percent,” Vu said. “If all of the sudden we lost all of those foreign-born priests the ministry in this country would suffer greatly.”Pasquier said the root cause for the priest shortage comes from changing social climate after World War II movement giving people new social causes to participate in besides religion.Catholics found different ways to benefit society like participating in or against the civil rights movement instead of trying to do good to society by joining an order in the church, Pasquier said.”Today, the reason for the shortage continuing has a lot to do with the sex abuse scandals which perpetuate a distrust of the priesthood,” Pasquier said. 
—-Contact Xerxes A. Wilson at [email protected]