Thanks for the comments, Donald. I understand how you feel. I'm familiar with the NORC data (I contributed to that research a few years ago).

I felt the way you do myself once when I worried I'd be the last guy left in my church someday, but my parish is now packed with young families, and we barely have enough parking spaces. If you ever read Fulton Sheen's books from the 1930s, you'll see he was concerned about some of the same trends 90 years ago, but he cited a number that leaped out at me: There were 300 million Catholics in the world in the 1930s. By 2000, there were 1 billion and now there are nearly 1.4 billion.

You might also note Time ran a cover story in 1965 asking if God was dead and just five years later, they ran a story on the Jesus Revolution. Religion means a "binding relationship" and when people have issues with a relationship, they move on to a new relationship. But humans have a way of letting us down and when they do, people often return to God.