Britain has become a 'Catholic country'

Telegraph.co.uk ^ | 12/23/07 | Jonathan Wynne-Jones

[melt]

Roman Catholics have overtaken Anglicans as the country's dominant religious group. More people attend Mass every Sunday than worship with the Church of England, figures seen by The Sunday Telegraph show.

Blair becomes Catholic in private ceremony The changing face of British Christianity Your view: What can the Church of England do to win back worshippers? This means that the established Church has lost its place as the nation's most popular Christian denomination after more than four centuries of unrivalled influence following the Reformation.

Last night, leading figures gave warning that the Church of England could become a minority faith and that the findings should act as a wake-up call.

The statistics show that attendance at Anglican Sunday services has dropped by 20 per cent since 2000. A survey of 37,000 churches, to be published in the new year, shows the number of people going to Sunday Mass in England last year averaged 861,000, compared with 852,000 Anglicans ­worshipping.

The rise of Catholicism has been bolstered by an influx of immigrants from eastern Europe and Africa, who have packed the pews of Catholic parishes that had previously been dwindling.

It is part of the changing face of churchgoing across Britain in the 21st century which has also seen a boom in the growth of Pentecostal churches, which have surpassed the Methodist Church as the country's third largest Christian denomination.

Worshipping habits have changed dramatically with a significant rise in attendance at mid-week services and at special occasions - the Church of England expects three million people to go to a parish church over Christmas Eve and Christmas Day

[arthurus]

What can the Church of England do...

A tiny start would be to quit appointing atheists as bishops.

[arthurus]

That’s too bad about the Magisterium. It includes the Bible and such. What do you do without that?

[Gorzaloon]

What can the Church of England do to win back worshippers?

Start by getting rid of the Queen Of Canterbury.

Then stop trying to be secular Unitarians.

Easy.

Free Clue: This stood for something.

[arthurus]

The Church was translating it into other languages from the beginning. When printing got going and a Book was no longer as relatively expensive as that new courthouse downtown, then the people could afford to own them, too. The Douai Rhiems translation into English happened about the same time as the KJV. And so much for Protestant mythology.

[ConservativeStLouisGuy]

next day BUMP!

[ConservativeStLouisGuy]

Britain has become a 'Catholic country'

Roman Catholics have overtaken Anglicans as the country's dominant religious group. More people attend Mass every Sunday than worship with the Church of England, figures seen by The Sunday Telegraph show.

This means that the established Church has lost its place as the nation's most popular Christian denomination after more than four centuries of unrivalled influence following the Reformation.

Last night, leading figures gave warning that the Church of England could become a minority faith and that the findings should act as a wake-up call.

The statistics show that attendance at Anglican Sunday services has dropped by 20 per cent since 2000. A survey of 37,000 churches, to be published in the new year, shows the number of people going to Sunday Mass in England last year averaged 861,000, compared with 852,000 Anglicans ­worshipping.

The rise of Catholicism has been bolstered by an influx of immigrants from eastern Europe and Africa, who have packed the pews of Catholic parishes that had previously been dwindling.

It is part of the changing face of churchgoing across Britain in the 21st century which has also seen a boom in the growth of Pentecostal churches, which have surpassed the Methodist Church as the country's third largest Christian denomination.

Worshipping habits have changed dramatically with a significant rise in attendance at mid-week services and at special occasions - the Church of England expects three million people to go to a parish church over Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

In an attempt to combat the declining interest in traditional religion, the Anglican Church has launched radical new forms of evangelism that include nightclub chaplains, a floating church on a barge and internet congregations.

The Rev Alister McGrath, prof­essor of historical theology at Oxford University, said that the church attendance findings from the organisation Christian Research should act as a wake-up call to the Church of England.

"While it can rightly point to the weight of history, the importance of cultural memory, the largest number of church buildings and nominal church members in defence of its continued status as the established church, there is clearly a problem emerging," said Prof McGrath, one of Anglicanism's most respected figures.

"What happens if the established church becomes a minority church?"

The Catholic Church has also suffered a serious fall in the size of its congregations, but the expansion of the European Union in 2004 resulted in its numbers being bolstered by the arrival of hundreds of thousands of Poles and Lithuanians.

Attendance at Mass in 1991 was recorded as 1.3 million, a drop of 40 per cent since 1963. But over the past six years it has fallen by only 13 per cent, with the rate of decline slowed by immigrants from Catholic countries.

The Rt Rev Crispian Hollis, the Bishop of Portsmouth, said that the Roman Church had been active in trying to win back lapsed worshippers, but conceded that mass immigration had been a significant factor in swelling its numbers. "The number of Catholics attending church has been catching the Anglicans over a number of years," he said.

"We don't want to be seen to be scoring points over the Anglican Church as we are in no way jealous of its position as the national church, but of course these figures are encouraging. It shows that the Church is no longer seen as on the fringes of society, but in fact is now at the heart of British life."

Danny Sriskandarajah, the head of migration, equalities and citizenship for the Institute for Public Policy Research, said that its research indicated that pews would not stay packed for long.

 

"We are already seeing numbers from eastern Europe dropping and many of them have already returned home," he said. "It is an important phenomenon, but it is likely to be temporary. I doubt we'll be seeing this level of attendance in another 10 years."

 

Churchgoing in Anglican and Catholic parishes had stood at about a million each for the past 10 years, though the relative equality in their numbers over recent years is surprising considering that there are 25 million people who regard themselves as Anglicans, and only 4.2 million Catholics.

 

"It isn't a competition. I'm delighted to see all Christian denominations flourishing," said the Rt Rev Graham Cray, the chairman of the Church of England's report on evangelism.

 

"Large numbers of eastern Europeans have come in to the country, which has certainly strengthened them as has happened with non-whites in central London churches."

[NucSubs]

Amen.

Christians must unite.

[ichabod1]

Actually if one were to go to Mass everyday for three years, the entire Bible would be covered. It is on a three year cycle.

I don't know if I believe this. THere are 66 chapters in Isaiah alone. If one were read each day that would take up two months. But I don't believe chapters are ever read in their entirety. Nor do I believe the cycle goes all the way through Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deut.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Doc, that's a gracious and reasonable response.

I just want to say I appreciate it when a person replies to provocation with a wise and tempered answer. It matters to be to be prayed for, too.

I pray for you, too: that Our Lord may grant a very Merry Christmas to you and yours!

[Mrs. Don-o]

Sadly, that's very true.

Pray for good Bishops.

[defconw]

I think you would find that it is in fact true, but you would have to have the entire thing in order for me to prove it. Hard to do. I don’t have the book.

[davisfh]

"One of the rescuers asked the man about a small structure down near the beach. 'Oh, that's my church,' he said."

"And the nearly identical structure next to it? 'That's the church I don't go to.'"

And, during this entire discussion, the point attempting to be made is that we, as a Judeo-Christian Nation should be focused on assuring that Islam and its attendant organizations and Sharia Law do not grow and flourish here. That should be "the church I don't go to." Nor should we "go to" any religious organizations that attempt to extract our compliance with a gun to the head or a knife to the throat.

Merry Christmas to you and yours.

[TalBlack]

The world didn’t need the catholic church to preserve the bible. How arrogant. God would have preserved His Word with or without the Popes church.

And that He did it WITH His (not the popes)Church doesn’t count for anything? Dismissing how it was ACTUALLY done isn’t arrogant?

Like or dislike anyone you want but credit where it’s due. As the Jews brought the Torah thru four and a half millienia, the Catholic church brought the new Testament thru two millenia.

[Grizzled Bear]

We seemed to go through the same stuff every year. I don’t know if different diocese use different missals. All I know for certain is that I was amazed when I read the Bible for myself.

[hinckley buzzard]

11 centuries later people like Luther, et al, could utilize their free will and begin abridging and editing it to their liking

The fact is that by the time of Luther the Church had officially and explicitly elevated the opinions of the magisterium above scripture. It was Luther, among others, who called the church to return to the Word. Denial of that fact is both arrogance and ignorance on your part.

[ZULU]

Give me a break!!

If you don;t want to eat pork - fine. Don’t eat it.

Check out St. Paul. He had a vision - it featured pork chops.

[Biggirl]

BINGO! This is what Christians of all denonminations must FOCUS on what UNITES US, not divide us. A Blessed Merry Christmas. :) =^..^=

[ZULU]

I’m not Catholic pal.

And the “veneration” Catholics have for her isn;t worship. As a Proestant I respect her.

But here we go again into trivial differences. The Muzzies may “venerate” her, but to them her Son was just a prophet, not the Son of God.

[Cuchulain]

I believe Ireland will be the last stronghold in Europe in the fight against islamic jihad. If it comes down to it, you may see the migration of the “Wild Geese” back to their ancestral home to defend it.

[ZULU]

True.

But celibacy is Church Law, not God’s Law. The Catholic Church recognizes that. And as Church law, the Catholic church can change it. I think it would be better for the Catholic Church to allow marriages for secular priests and maintain celibacy for the “regular orders” like monks.

But that is merely my personal opinion and not meant to be a criticism of the Catholic Church, an organization I as a Protestant have great admiration for.

Both Protestants and Catholics have a lot to be ashamed of from back in reformation days, but I think most people fail to realize that "heresy" or "Papism" back then was judged by the temporal authorities more as a form of treason to the State Monarch's choice in religion, whoever he or she might be, rather than from a purely doctrinal perspective. I.e. politics was every bit as important as Theology, and sometimes even more so - look at Cardinal Richelieu and the the Thirty Years War in Germany, or England supporting Catholic Portugal against Spain.

The important thing is to remember what we have in common and to fight together against Islam. As far as personal religious differences among ourselves - live and let live.

REMEMBER - one of the reasons Islams made such quick inroads in the eastern Mediterranean basin was due to “Orthodox” persecution of other Christian sects there. The muzzies tolerated them and so they thought they had it better under Islam.

Time showed they thought wrong.