The bad: According to separate reports from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and the American Religious Identification Survey, fewer Americans now call themselves Catholic, and those who do aren’t attending church or praying as often as they used to.

The good news: The Catholics who remain, church leaders will tell you, are far more devoted and involved — particularly young adults.

“I think there’s a certain sort of energy and passion and joy for the Lord that you see with a lot of young people,” said Nathaniel Hurd, a 32-year-old from Washington, set to begin seminary in the fall.

That trend, it would seem, bucks a deeper and longer-term pattern of religiosity in America: Steep decline.

Just 33 percent of Catholics attended church weekly in 2007, compared with 53 percent just seven years before,  according to Pew’s U.S. Religious Landscape Survey.

Even more telling: While nearly one-in-three Americans was raised Catholic, fewer than one-in-four described themselves as Catholic in that same Pew report. The church, in other words, is bleeding followers.

“The official Catholic directory records fewer Catholics for 2008 than in did for 2007 in the United States,” said priest and Catholic University sociology professor Paul Sullins. “That’s an indicator of a long-term, slow decline in religiosity.”  

The numbers, though, aren’t all bad.

According to the Pew study, 2.6 percent of U.S. adults have at some point in their lives changed religious affiliations to Catholicism. The disproportionately high number of immigrants from traditionally Catholic countries has helped fill the ranks, too — all allowing the church to maintain its market share (about 25 percent) of the faithful in America.

Some church leaders find comfort, as well, in the belief that the decline in U.S. religiosity will eventually bottom out, noting that when it does, those left will be the “survivors.”

“In some ways it’s actually quite an exciting time to be a Catholic,” Sullins said. “People are much more energetic.”

According to Susan Gibbs, director of communications for the Archdiocese of Washington, that’s particularly true among young adults.

“One of the things we just started tracking is the number of young adults becoming Catholic,” Gibbs said. “And that’s an area where we’re seeing a lot of climb,” at least in the D.C. region.

More energy; newer to the faith; fewer family constraints — general traits, Gibbs and other Catholic leaders say, that have allowed young adults to more actively participate in the faith — even mount leadership roles within it.

Maria Menacho has been going to St. Matthew’s since 1993, when she moved to Washington from Lima, Peru, for college. She said there’s been a dramatic shift in the makeup of the church.

“I have noticed, probably over the last five years, an incredible growth in the activities, in the interests, of the young adult population,” she said.

It’s a growth, no doubt, that the Catholic Church is very relieved to see.