“Each person is their own little catechism and magisterium and authority on right and wrong.”

If a person is grounded in the “truth as it is in Jesus”, they likely WILL be “their own little catechism” as it were. I keep insisting that we’d BETTER have an individual faith that can stand all alone, yet IN Christ.

Pinging Daniel1212 to provide actual statistics, instead of NKP’s opinion posted here.

You mean "the Catholic Church after 2,000 years is still far and way the biggest Christian faith on the planet"?

And " broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat." I provided abundant documentation here on the claim that Catholicism is far and away the largest Christian denomination is not only growing in the United States but growing worldwide, and here, unlike other specious, exposed claims, such as the bare and refuted assertion that Catholics make up to 50% of the military (versus 25 percent of all troops), this one is conditionally barely (see Pew below) true, as at 1.228 billion (if using Vatican stats) Catholicism is the largest single faith (not versus denominations) "called" Christian.

However, his number would include those whom conservative RCs excom as CINOS, but which Rome manifestly treats as members in life and in death For conservative RCs to include these as members means they are calling themselves brethren of such, and sanctioning such a amalgamized church, while if they do not then they are preaching a different church then the visible one, or one that fails to actually discipline her wayward members.

Of course, since church law, baptism makes you a Catholic, and which you remain as until you have been formally excommunicated or formally obtain this status, then the can claim an inflated figure of RCs while relegating multitudes as self-excommunicated CINOs And of course, like as towards defining Protestantism, broadbrushing is employed as needed for polemical ends.

The Vatican figures, as with that of other churches are likely not very accurate, not only due to not including those from countries for which numbers are not available (like an est. 40 million+ Protestants and 12 million Catholics. in China), but i have not yet found how these figures are actually arrived at by the Vatican. Parish census results have been stated as one means, but the accuracy of which is not clear.

according to David Voas, professor of population studies at the University of Essex's institute of social and economic research.

"The Catholic Church tends to be a little more on the relaxed end of the scale and along with that you have got to remember it's an absolutely huge organisation. There are more than a quarter of a million Catholic parishes."

"In practice, parish priests are asked to estimate the size of their flock. That's partly a function of how many people turn up to mass, but they also make some sort of guesstimate of the number who might come along for rites of passage like baptism, first communion, weddings, funerals and so on.

An explanation of 3 ways of calculating members is given by this RC blog: http://blogs.nd.edu/thecc/2012/06/04/counting-catholics-a-comparison-of-3-methods/ The Pew Research Center in the US makes its own estimates by counting people who self-identify as Catholics. It collates census and survey data and its latest estimate stands at 1.1 billion, 100 million lower than the figure put out by the Vatican.

Conrad Hackett, a demographer from The Pew Center's forum on religion and public life, does not think their figure is in conflict with the Vatican's. He says it is just measuring something different. He gives the example of Brazil. According to the Vatican, 163 million people are identified as Catholic, but the 2010 Brazilian census shows that just under 127 million people identify themselves as Catholic.

Of course, it is all very well counting baptisms, but this means that anyone who has lapsed or left the Church altogether or has even died may still be counted - a problem which faces every religion. - http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21545819

Pew states,

Polling and Analysis

February 13, 2013

The Global Catholic Population

Over the past century, the number of Catholics around the globe has more than tripled, from an estimated 291 million in 1910 to nearly 1.1 billion as of 2010, according to a comprehensive demographic study by the Pew Research Center.

But over the same period, the world’s overall population also has risen rapidly. As a result, Catholics have made up a remarkably stable share of all people on Earth. In 1910, Catholics comprised about half (48%) of all Christians and 17% of the world’s total population, according to historical estimates from the World Christian Database. A century later, the Pew Research study found, Catholics still comprise about half (50%) of Christians worldwide and 16% of the total global population.

What has changed substantially over the past century is the geographic distribution of the world’s Catholics. In 1910, Europe was home to about two-thirds of all Catholics, and nearly nine-in-ten lived either in Europe (65%) or Latin America (24%). By 2010, by contrast, only about a quarter of all Catholics (24%) were in Europe. The largest share (39%) were in Latin America and the Caribbean. -http://www.pewforum.org/2013/02/13/the-global-catholic-population/

Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...er_of_members) suggests that there are 1.2 billion Catholics, plus a further 600-800 million Protestants

The vast majority of protestants Catholics never set foot in the front door of a church.

That is another careless bare assertion which is contrary to the evidence, since most Protestants do not become members by being baptized as members, and as 46 percent of Protestants report attend church at least weekly versus 38 percent of Catholics, and a Gallup poll found that church attendance among American Protestants has remained stable at roughly 45% since 1955, while church attendance among American Catholics has dropped from 75% to 45%, although it has remained stable since 1995 despite all the negative press related to abuse scandals - http://www.gallup.com/poll/117382/church-going-among-catholics-slides-tie-protestants.aspx (and in Latin America, 83% of Protestants report attending church at least once a month, compared with a median of 62% of Catholics- http://www.pewforum.org/2014/11/13/religion-in-latin-america/)

In the USA 24 % of Catholics attend mass weekly Since

Of an estimated Catholic population in the United States of almost 78 million, less than 48 million attend more than once yearly. http://www.glenmary.org/rcms2010/

Church attendance [2002-2005]: Evangelicals at approx. 60 percent showed the highest percentage of those who reported they attended services weekly or almost weekly, with 30% going more than once a week. Catholics were at 45 percent (9% more than once a week), and Jews 15 percent. Gallup poll. between 2002 and 2005. http://www.christianpost.com/article/20060418/weekly-attendance-highest-among-Evangelical-churches.htm

39 percent of Catholics affirmed not attending church is a sin, versus 23 percent of Protestants. Ellison Research, March 11, 2008 http://ellisonresearch.com/releases/20080311.htm http://www.christianpost.com/article/20080312/study-behaviors-americans-consider-sinful.htm

Catholics' responses to the questions that make up the 2004 Gallup Index of Leading Religious Indicators show Catholics lag noticeably behind Protestants on all but two of the survey items that make up the Index: belief in God and church membership. http://www.gallup.com/poll/14725/protestants-vs-catholics-whos-got-religion.aspx

Mighty presumptuous of you to tell me what “my” problem is! Do you have the "gift" of mind reading? Funny, that wasn't listed as a fruit of the Holy Spirit. Nearly every time you post to threads like these you show a bigotry and hatred that NO self-professed Christian should. Deal with your own problems!

Pinging you to daniel1212’s post that examines just how many actual catholics there are. Please read it.

Merry Christmas

Well the next time you use the word “you” in answering my posts you’ll think before you type.

If half the Catholics in the world dropped dead today the surviving Catholics would still outnumber ANY PROTESTANT sect.

“If half the Catholics in the world dropped dead today the surviving Catholics would still outnumber ANY PROTESTANT sect.”

Let’s clarify...

If half of Catholics died, the remaining half would not outnumber all Protestants.
Your claim is phrased as if Protestants are different “sects”.

Not true. Sorry. All Protestant rites are in submission to our Lord & Savior. All on the same team. When you add all the rites up, they would make your claim untrue.

(Obviously, this does not include any “protestant” group that no longer acknowledges the core of the faith.)

But frankly, who cares about that? Have you seriously considered that in the Bible, numbers do not mean much? Why would they matter to you or anyone?

If half the catholics died, of the remaining half, how many would you count as members? Just the ones who actually attend anything yearly, monthly or weekly, or everyone?

As a Christian, wouldn’t it make more sense to count those who have saving faith in Christ, as evidenced by their fruit?

Blessings to you NK in this Advent season.

“Not true. Sorry. All Protestant rites are in submission to our Lord & Savior. All on the same team”.

So you count on your “team” protestants faiths that believe in sodomite “marriage”, and take no stance on abortion. Quite a team.

No faith that openly supports sodomite “marriage” and the killing of the unborn are in submission to our Lord and Savior.

I wrote the opposite. Please reread.

Do you really want him?

Consider it as FURTHER proof that he’s lost his senses.

Fixed it for you.