This exploratory study used an online survey from the Flourishing Congregations Institute to investigate how Canadian Catholics grow spiritually within their parishes. Using an exploratory factor analysis, we explored the interrelationships among a set of spiritual growth variables. A three-component solution resulted in the Environmental Context of the Community Scale, the Pathway for Spiritual Growth Scale, and the Connecting in Community Scale. Next, we performed a Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient to assess the relationship between the items in each scale for spiritual growth. The findings indicated strong, positive correlations for both the Environmental Context of the Community and Pathway for Spiritual Growth Scales, while the Connecting in Community Scale showed moderate correlations. Cluster analysis helped to categorize participants into three groups: Flourishing, Maturing, and Developing Spiritual Growth Catholics. The analysis also identified unique characteristics for each group, based on variables such as age, gender, marital status, income, parish tenure, and Mass attendance.

Along with parents and schools, congregations are part of a “religious transmission ecosystem” with children. Using case study data with a Catholic parish in Canada, this article explores how this parish defines and approaches various roles and initiatives across the religious transmission ecosystem, along with its perceived and experienced obstacles and responses related to religious transmission. I argue that while parents are seen as the central socialization influence, with parishes and Catholic schools playing supportive roles, a perceived problem is that many parents along with teachers in Catholic schools are cultural Catholics. As a result, this parish seeks to reassert itself as the dominant socialization influence in the religious transmission ecosystem toward (re)socializing children and their parents and teachers. Despite best efforts to help with religious transmission, this parish has resigned itself to a “planting seeds” approach, in hopes that something takes root and grows for parents and their children. The confluence of macro- and micro-level factors beyond parish control alongside cultural assumptions and behaviors within the parish together yield weak starting points to set children and their parents on a trajectory for higher rates of Catholic religious transmission.

Few sociological studies have explored mental health and Christian congregations. Such research is absent in Canada. Using questionnaire data with 969 Christian congregants and leaders across theological traditions in Canada, this study examines how mental health is normalized or stigmatized in Canadian congregations. We draw from symbolic interactionist theory to argue that the narratives that congregations use and the resources they draw upon to discuss and respond to mental health shape congregants’ perceptions and experiences of mental health, illness, and challenges. Our research shows that mental health and illness is both normalized and stigmatized in Canadian congregations. For instance, 67 percent (n = 637) of respondents say they would not be embarrassed if other congregants knew they were experiencing mental health challenges, while 28 percent (n = 267) report they would feel embarrassed. Yet congregations that embrace religious-only or absent narratives are more likely to have congregants who perceive or experience mental health stigma and less likely to seek church-based mental health support or to report church supports helped them versus congregations that incorporate some combination of a bio/psycho/social approach. We highlight opportunities for more comprehensive mental health supports along with strengthened equipping for churches in responding to mental health and illness.

What attitudes and perceptions regarding mental health, mental illness, and mental health challenges exist in Canadian Christian congregations, and what congregational supports and resources related to these topics exist? These questions anchor this survey, in partnership with Sanctuary Mental Health Ministries, with nearly 1000 church leaders and congregants across theological traditions and Canadian regions. This report also offers a way forward for churches, informed by these data.