Catholics Trail Protestants in Church Attendance

Gallup News Service ^ | December 16, 2003 | George H. Gallup Jr.

[Snuffington]

ping

[cubreporter]

Who cares? Catholics are Catholics and Protestants are Protestants. I didn't know there was a race going on. This is stupid! What does this have to do withts thing except to say Catholics trail Protestants in attendance? Huh?????????

[tbird5]

Catholics have to go to mass every Sunday. Protestants don't have to attend services weekly. This is sad for all those that call themselves Catholic.

[Salvation]

i disagree with these statistics.

[Salvation]

It's not sad. Catholics are there every week. At three, four, five, sometimes even as many as ten or eleven services! (The larger numbers are large parishes that may have three priests: a pastor, and two associate pastors, and usually one or two deacons.) Now I'll let you calculate the numbers.

[pbear8]

Catholics have the privilege of assisting at the Holy Sacifice of the Mass daily, we are required by scripture and tradition to attend Mass on Sunday and Holy Days. It is not sad, it is a great joy.

[Salvation]

Catholic archdiocese of Washington [D.C.] has largest ordination class in 14 years

Roman Catholic friar community growing

Retiring priests pose problem for the Archdiocese of Boston

Church Is Still Attracting Converts

[Salvation]

Priests Down, Seminarians Up

Seminary Springtime: Father Darrin Connall s Big Success

In Seminaries, New Ways for a New Generation

Answering an Uncommon Call Young American men dedicate themselves to priesthood

[sarasmom]

Are you passively ignorant, or do you have an active agenda?

[Salvation]

Catholic Discussion Ping!

Please notify me via Freepmail if you would like to be added to or removed from the Catholic Discussion Ping list.

[Salvation]

**it is a great joy.**

Amen!

Feast of the Nativity coming up!

How many Protestants have three or four Masses (services) on Christmas Day?

[I still care]

Thought this might be germaine to the discussion. I got it from a different thread - it's a statement by a spokesman from the pseudo religious National Council of (Communist) Churches.

"Marcus Welty, a researcher with the National Council of Churches, said mainline Protestants may not equal the numbers of their Evangelical counterparts, and their members may not be as churchgoing, but they do lead religious lives demonstrated by their volunteering for causes like reducing poverty and championing certain issues in communities."

In other words, it is the evangelicals that are attending church, not the "mainline" (theologically liberal) ones.

[Maximilian]

Interesting data from Gallup. One does notice a few statistical anomalies, like the negative outlier in 1997 and the positive one in 2000. Neither one fits the rest of the data. But the overall trend is unmistakable.

Hermann, care to explain one more time how this supports your theory that the fall in Catholic church attendance has nothing to do with changes in the Catholic Church, but is merely indicative of wider societal changes? Pretty near impossible to square that theory with the graph on this page which seems to indicate something diametrically opposite, since Protestant church attendance is higher now than it was in 1960. But then again, you can always fall back on the old, "Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?"

[Land of the Irish]

How many Protestants have three or four Masses (services) on Christmas Day?

How many Catholics have three or four Masses on other Holy Days of Obligation. None - in my area.

[Salvation]

The large church here (with the eleven Masses on weekends) does!

Also 24/7 Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.

[Land of the Irish]

Ping

[Maximilian]

How many Protestants have three or four Masses (services) on Christmas Day?

I think it's a mistake to look at this in a partisan spirit as though it were the Yankees versus the Red Sox. Instead we should look at it as a wake up call to ourselves. As Jesus was fond of saying, "Do not even the pagans do as much?" Catholics had a 30 percent head start over the protestants just a generation ago, and look how quickly we have lost it.

Regarding the protestant services on Christmas, that's easily answered by the fact that they have so many more churches. For example, our town has 1 Catholic church and at least a dozen different protestant denominations. They don't need so many people in one church to add up.

Regarding the percentages, these numbers are much, much higher than what is counted in the Catholic churches every October. I think what happens is that everyone who intended to go to church, both Catholics and protestants, answers "Yes," even though on that particular Sunday they may have slept in or been travelling or so forth. They answer "Yes" if they think of themselves as churchgoers even if they didn't technically go to church last Sunday like the question asked them.

[potlatch]

I was curious about your reply to tbird5. Catholics commit a Mortal Sin when they don't attend mass. I don't believe the same is true of Protestant churches. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[Rome2000]

Protestants pulled into a clear lead over Catholics in weekly church attendance after the sex scandals

Gallup will be gone in the year 4000, but the Church will be doing just fine.