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Posted on 07/10/2003 7:10:39 PM PDT by Hermann the Cherusker
The data above are from the Annual Catholic Directory of the United States and Canada. The data is for all American Catholic dioceses, including the eastern rite jurisdictions.
Column 1 is the year of the data (the data for the previous year appears in the Catholic Directory of any given year). |
I assumed an average 15 year fertile period for each Marriage beginning one year after the Marriage assuming an age at Marriage of approximately 25.
The moving totals are shown adjacent to the first year within them.
The ratio of the moving totals of Infant Baptisms and Marriages is an indicator of total Catholic fertility for a given year. The peak years of faithfulness to Catholic teaching on Birth Control are clearly the people married in the years 1943 to 1960 and then beginning in 1980 through 1987, which is the latest year possible for the 15 year moving total.
By the one year ratio, it appears that the peak years of births relative to marriages occuring is 1953 to 1964, and then a sudden renewal in the period 1998 to present, which can only be attributed to a sudden at least partial return to the mores of the generation prior to the Baby Boom, because as the number of marriages has plummeted since 1990 by around 30%, the number of Baptisms has held steady. The only conclusion possible is that young Catholic families today are having more children.
These trends would be even more striking if the enormous number of annulments in America since 1970 were accounted for in the moving total of Marriage statistics. With Ordinary Process Annulments running at around 40,000 per year for many years now, assuming just half of those occur among people of childbearing age would result in a running 15 year reduction in the roles of the Married by 300,000, boosting the Baptisms per Marriage number by 7%. Increasing the current ratios by that amount would put the numbers back to the hieghts reached during the Baby Boom.
It is also clear from these numbers that the memories of those pining away for the good old days of the 1950's are faulty. It is impossible that the majority of Catholic families then had 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and more chidren, because there simply are not enough number of Baptisms recorded to support that. In fact, careful personal reflection by these people, and by younger people with regard to older families they know, should show this clearly to be false. The typical Catholic family at that time would probably have been 4 to 5 children. The trend today appears to be heading back in that direction.
This unremarked positive phenomenon is nearly universal in European lands also. For example, France, Lithuania, Germany, Switzerland, and the Czech Republic are now averaging around 3.3 Baptisms per Catholic Marriage in 2003. Ireland and Leichentenstein are averaging around 3.5 Baptisms per Marriage. The Netherlands, Austria, and Belgium are averaging around 3.75 Baptisms per Marriage. Luxmbourg is averaging close to an amazing 4.5 Baptisms per Marriage. The only major sad cases are Italy, averaging just 2, and Spain and Portugal, averaging somewhat more than 2. Mitigating this is the extreme faithfulness of those in Italy who are having Children - nearly every child Baptised is making it through confirmation, unlike in the US, where trends are that 40% never make it to Confirmation.
By way of comparison, the Phillipines, which is widely held out as a model of faithfulness to Church teaching, is averaging about 5 Baptisms per Marriage. The West is closing this gap!
The sudden break with Catholic practice is clear enough in the data in 1968. Intriguing thoough is the equally sudden apparent return starting in 1988 going quickly from 2.7 to 3.5 Baptisms per Marriage in three years, and then again starting in 1998 climbing towards 4.0 with no end in sight.
Also interesting is a check of how many are marrying in the Catholic Church, shown in Column 8. Taking the Marriage figure for any given year, doubling it, and comparing it to the Baptism figure 25 years previous gives a good rough idea of how many people are getting Married in the Church. For those born through 1949 (marred in 1974 on average), the ideal of all being Married in the Church is clearly present. After that, catastrophe strikes, with around 40% of all Catholics marrying outside the Church. Worse, the number of mixed Marriages is about 30% of the total, so the number is really closer to 50% or slightly under of Catholics marrying within the Church. Recent trends in this show no improvement - the seperation of the tares from the wheat in the Fields of the Lord is continuing. And the data also strongly imply a complete breakdown in Catholic education's effectiveness beginning with those starting school around 1959.
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FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
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My granddaughter starts Catholic School this fall.
I see a very obvious alternate conclusion: a higher percentage of children being baptized are illegitimate. This conclusion has the advantage of being supported by your data, and by generally available data about trends in society.
Pope Pius XI explains in his encyclical Casti Connubii:
They, therefore, who rashly and heedlessly contract mixed marriages, from which the maternal love and providence of the Church dissuades her children for very sound reasons, fail conspicuously in this respect, sometimes with danger to their eternal salvation. This attitude of the Church to mixed marriages appears in many of her documents, all of which are summed up in the Code of Canon Law: "Everywhere and with the greatest strictness the Church forbids marriages between baptized persons, one of whom is a Catholic and the other a member of a schismatical or heretical sect; and if there is, add to this, the danger of the falling away of the Catholic party and the perversion of the children, such a marriage is forbidden also by the divine law."[62] If the Church occasionally on account of circumstances does not refuse to grant a dispensation from these strict laws (provided that the divine law remains intact and the dangers above mentioned are provided against by suitable safeguards), it is unlikely that the Catholic party will not suffer some detriment from such a marriage.Whence it comes about not unfrequently, as experience shows, that deplorable defections from religion occur among the offspring, or at least a headlong descent into that religious indifference which is closely allied to impiety. There is this also to be considered that in these mixed marriages it becomes much more difficult to imitate by a lively conformity of spirit the mystery of which We have spoken, namely that close union between Christ and His Church.
Assuredly, also, will there be wanting that close union of spirit which as it is the sign and mark of the Church of Christ, so also should be the sign of Christian wedlock, its glory and adornment. For, where there exists diversity of mind, truth and feeling, the bond of union of mind and heart is wont to be broken, or at least weakened. From this comes the danger lest the love of man and wife grow cold and the peace and happiness of family life, resting as it does on the union of hearts, be destroyed.
However, that is another valid explanation, which I would accept as possible accounting for some, but not all, of the increase.
My marriage was a mixed marriage when we got married. Why is that bad?
Well, you are taking that in the wrong sense. I was saying, "worse yet, when you consider the number of mixed Marriages, the number of Catholics marrying inside the Church is even lower, because non-Catholic marriage partners mean even fewer Catholics marrying within the Church."
However, in general, mixed Marriages do not work out, and Catholic Tradition discourages and forbids them. For every sucess story there are more failures, because of religious friction. And frequently, when they do "succeed", the parents and children drop out of Church to create peace in the family.
The ideal for two people of disparate cult who are in love would be for one of them to convert prior to the marriage, especially if one of them is not Baptised.
"Occasionally"? The Church FREQUENTLY granted dispensations, even in Pius XI's day. But, Pius XI's condemnation (that is what it is) caused good people like my parents to be married in the rectory of Annunciation Church in Houston in 1944. My father later converted to Catholicism, in spite of this humiliation, and mom and dad died, 48 years later, within a year of each other, still married.
ACAC, as long as you and your spouse are aware of the issues involved in marriages involving two people of different faiths, there's nothing "bad" about your marriage.
Max, you know very well that the Church's attitude toward mixed marriages has changed, significantly. That's for the better.
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