In the opening decades of the twenty-first century, the matter of who stays Catholic, and how, has become one of the most important questions in American Catholicism. Research about Catholics going their own way captured the attention of the public in general and Catholic leadership in particular, and focused on the notable drop-off in participation in Catholic ritual life, an increasing political independence of the laity from the wishes of Catholic bishops, a widespread abhorrence at the continuing revelations of clerical sexual abuse and episcopal cover-up, and enduring resistance toward active church involvement from post–Vatican II generations.