Are there really only 800,000 Catholics in Minnesota? That’s less than 15.2% of the state’s population (while nationwide Catholics are 22% of the population), and I thought that Catholics were a huge percentage of the population in the Iron Range (Poles, Croats, etc.) and St. Paul (Irish, Italian), and that German Catholics were as prevalent throughout the state as Norwegian Lutherans.
Wikipedia is fairly o.k. on non-controversial stuff.
It says 1,260,660 Catholics, largest religious group in MN, 28%. Cites sources but I haven’t checked them.
800K seems low to me. Maybe His Excellency means folks who actually belong to a parish and show up for Mass. That number could be lower than self-identifying CINOs.
Not all Lutherans up there are Scandinavian. Many are German, including both sides of my family. Seems most Catholic Germans are down here in MD and thereabouts - Bavarian types (also part of my mom’s family).
A great many Lutherans are of German origin. The Missouri Syhod was founded by German immigrants, who left Germany because of their refusal to accept some sort of government-mandated unionism. In a manner much like many Lutherans of Norse ancestry, LCMS worship services were conducted in the language of their origins up to the 1940s, although offered as an alternative to English at that time and for some years prior. Missouri Synod Lutherans were frequently described in common parlance by other Lutherans as “the German church.”