{"id":3337,"date":"2007-12-11T10:37:00","date_gmt":"2007-12-11T10:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2007\/12\/for-extra-credit-can-you-name-the-seven-sacraments.html"},"modified":"2007-12-11T10:37:00","modified_gmt":"2007-12-11T10:37:00","slug":"for-extra-credit-can-you-name-the-seven-sacraments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/12\/for-extra-credit-can-you-name-the-seven-sacraments.html","title":{"rendered":"For extra credit: can you name the seven sacraments?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m not sure why this bit of news<\/a> shocks me — given the poor-to-God-awful state of catechesis here in the U.S., it’s par for the course — but it’s quite an eye-opener: <\/p>\n

A new study has uncovered a surprising lack of religious knowledge among both Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. <\/p>\n

Contradicting the impression that residents of Northern Ireland are generally more religious than their neighbors in the Irish republic, a survey by the Millward Brown Ulster firm found that the level of religious knowledge is roughly the same on both sides of the border. <\/p>\n

The survey– the first of its kind in the region — found that Catholics in Northern Ireland show the same level of religious knowledge as those in the south. Among Protestants, however, the residents of Northern Ireland are less knowledgable. Overall, only 42% of the poll respondents knew that there are 4 Gospels, and just 54% could name the persons of the Trinity. The survey uncovered a striking decline in religious knowledge among younger respondents. On each question and most others, Catholics scored substantially higher results. Only 21% of those aged 16- 24 knew the number of the Gospels, and only 33% could identify the persons of the Trinity. <\/p>\n

Commenting on the poll figures, Stephen Cave of the Evangelical Alliance of Northern Ireland said: “Overall the figures are not good but the drop in knowledge, almost halved within a generation, indicates that the Christian faith is becoming less meaningful to those under 25 years of age.” His colleague Sean Mullen of the Evangelical Alliance of Ireland added: “The notion that Christianity can be transmitted through the culture from one generation to the next is clearly no longer valid.” <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The complete results of the survey are available at this link<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m not sure why this bit of news shocks me — given the poor-to-God-awful state of catechesis here in the U.S., it’s par for the course — but it’s quite an eye-opener: A new study has uncovered a surprising lack of religious knowledge among both Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. Contradicting the impression that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":204,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-this-and-that"],"yoast_head":"\nFor extra credit: can you name the seven sacraments? - The Deacon's Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/12\/for-extra-credit-can-you-name-the-seven-sacraments.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"For extra credit: can you name the seven sacraments? - The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I’m not sure why this bit of news shocks me — given the poor-to-God-awful state of catechesis here in the U.S., it’s par for the course — but it’s quite an eye-opener: A new study has uncovered a surprising lack of religious knowledge among both Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. Contradicting the impression that…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/12\/for-extra-credit-can-you-name-the-seven-sacraments.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-12-11T10:37:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Deacon Greg Kandra\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"For extra credit: can you name the seven sacraments? - The Deacon's Bench","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/12\/for-extra-credit-can-you-name-the-seven-sacraments.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"For extra credit: can you name the seven sacraments? - The Deacon's Bench","og_description":"I’m not sure why this bit of news shocks me — given the poor-to-God-awful state of catechesis here in the U.S., it’s par for the course — but it’s quite an eye-opener: A new study has uncovered a surprising lack of religious knowledge among both Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. Contradicting the impression that…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/12\/for-extra-credit-can-you-name-the-seven-sacraments.html","og_site_name":"The Deacon's Bench","article_published_time":"2007-12-11T10:37:00+00:00","author":"Deacon Greg Kandra","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/12\/for-extra-credit-can-you-name-the-seven-sacraments.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/12\/for-extra-credit-can-you-name-the-seven-sacraments.html","name":"For extra credit: can you name the seven sacraments? - The Deacon's Bench","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#website"},"datePublished":"2007-12-11T10:37:00+00:00","dateModified":"2007-12-11T10:37:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#\/schema\/person\/5a7b3c6e9d155e382842aa310ff9b1ee"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/12\/for-extra-credit-can-you-name-the-seven-sacraments.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/12\/for-extra-credit-can-you-name-the-seven-sacraments.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/12\/for-extra-credit-can-you-name-the-seven-sacraments.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"For extra credit: can you name the seven sacraments?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/","name":"The Deacon's Bench","description":"Where a Roman Catholic Deacon Ponders the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#\/schema\/person\/5a7b3c6e9d155e382842aa310ff9b1ee","name":"Deacon Greg Kandra","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/114\/1144d939be636f641ea021e1d347f9fdx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/114\/1144d939be636f641ea021e1d347f9fdx96.jpg","caption":"Deacon Greg Kandra"},"description":"A Roman Catholic deacon serving the Diocese of Brooklyn, New York, Greg Kandra is News Director for the diocese's cable channel, NET (New Evangelization Television.) Prior to that, Deacon Greg worked for 26 years as a writer and producer for CBS News, where he contributed to \"The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric,\" \"60 Minutes II,\" \"48 Hours,\" (Emmy Award, Writers Guild of America Award) and \"Sunday Morning.\" He was co-writer for the acclaimed documentary \"9\/11,\" hosted by Robert DeNiro. (Emmy Award, Christopher Award, Peabody Award, Writers Guild of America Award.) His radio essays were featured in the bestselling book \"Deadlines and Datelines\" by Dan Rather. He's also a two-time winner of the Catholic Press Association Award. Other places you may find him: AMERICA, U.S. CATHOLIC, CATHOLIC DIGEST, REALITY (Redemptorist Communications) and THE BROOKLYN TABLET. He also contributes homiletic reflections to the parish resource CONNECT!, published by Liturgical Publications. In November 2009, he began serving a three-year term as a consultant to the Communications Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Deacon Greg grew up in Maryland (Go Terps!) but he and his wife today live in the beautiful borough of Queens, New York. You can contact Deacon Greg at dcngreg@gmail.com.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/author\/gkandra"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/204"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3337\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}