Eileen Markey.

The question for younger Catholics is not, Why do we leave the church? There are plenty of obvious reasons: patriarchy, a secular world, lack of faith, poor liturgies, homophobia. The more interesting question is, Why do we stay? I would not belong to any other organization whose practices I disagree with so much.

There are three or four reasons why we continue to call ourselves Catholic, even as we disagree with Vatican teachings on women priests, on birth control, on dissent, on homosexuality. We stay because we were raised with a high level of practice and taught the rough rudiments of theology at Catholic schools and universities. We feel a sense of ownership for the church. This is my church, and reactionary Vatican pronouncements aren't going to get me to leave.

For many of my peers, being Catholic means being in struggle. Not only the classic struggle to know and serve God. The struggle is a fight to reform this church of ours. If we leave, we accept defeat. We stay because in remaining we add a drop of liberal thought into this sea of conservative practices.

We stay out of loyalty to a vision of what the church could be. Should be. We stay also because we are educated enough to understand that we are the church. We are able to discern which teachings are central. We are not supposed to pick and choose what we believe, but we know it is more essential to believe in the Incarnation than to believe that only men can be priests. So we stay.

But we also can't leave.

Even if we don't go to Mass every week, our worldview, our approach to politics, to work, to relationships, moves within a Catholic framework. It is part of our identity, from plaid jumpers in childhood, to respect for celibate, learned men, to a take on fighting poverty that is not charity but justice for fellow humans.

Many of us stay in the church because we appreciate its countercultural stance. We stay for the radical message of love and forgiveness and community. The essential teachings of the church stand in stark contrast to a cynical, consumer culture. The countercultural stances of other groups and institutions get sucked up into marketing every few months, but the church remains separate from all that. Like Catholics of any generation, we like the story. And we like the idea of something that can't be sold.

Over the course of two thousand years, Mary has become a virgin and professors have had to sign loyalty oaths, but the story hasn't changed. And the story of Christ and his church still resonates.

But finally, what keeps us Catholic is what makes us Catholic: the Eucharist. For all its religious, political, and personal meanings, the Eucharist is why I'll never leave my flawed church.

The young Catholics still here stay because we assent to the community consuming God together, to the message that we are all connected, to the idea that the divine is present in all of us, and to the belief that this assent nourishes us.

Eileen Markey is an American journalist living in London.