And most Hispanics in this country are not Catholic. Only around 35-40% of Hispanics in the US are part of the Catholic Church. This lack of fidelity to a Catholic identity only heightens the seperation of many Hispanics from any possible identity with the white Catholic ethnics whose neighborhoods they are frequently moving into.
um okay...I'll take that into consideration...all those Mexicans and only 1 in 3 are Catholics...sure.....
Believe it or not, many come here nonbaptized. There is a shortage of priests in Mexico and Central America. Meanwhile, the Evangelical movement has been growing by leaps and bounds. Unofficial estimates have Guatemala at 50% Protestant now.
Mexicans have tended to be more faithful in this regard than others, but Mexicans are not by any means all of the Hispanics (20 million Mexicans vs. 15 million other Hispanics). The rates in Dominican and Puerto Rican neighborhoods are truly appalling. The Vatican needs to send over a new Mother Cabrini. A typical parish in a Puerto Rican neighborhood in Philadelphia has the following statistics. St. Hugh of Cluny - 15,200 inhabitants of whom 80% are Puerto Rican, 4,120 Catholics, of whom 90% are Puerto Rican. So just 3,860 of 12,010 Puerto Ricans participate in the life of the local parish - that's 32%, meaning 68% of the Hispanics are NOT Catholic. Of course, a simple drive through the neighborhood could tell you that, with the proliferation of Pentecostal and Evangelical churches.
However, even for the Mexicans, simple exercises can show the problem. The Catholic population of the Diocese of San Antonio is lower than the population of the overall mostly Mexican Hispanic community in the same geography. Considering that there are certainly some Irish, German, Italian, etc. Catholics in San Antonio, clearly, the number of Mexicans who are part of the Church there is no more than 50% or so.
The numbers put out by some Hispanic organizations, such as here are innacurrate, since they overstate the US Catholic population by about 15 million - that's 15 million people who are not registered with the Church and definitely not coming to Mass on Sunday. Most of the overstatement is among Hispanics.