Replies

I beg to differ. There is not one immigrant in our OCIA class and it has 14 people in it and there has not been one immigrant in it since I have attended this Catholic Church.

I work in the office and the files are purged constantly. If anyone received any of the Sacraments at our church it is on file and will remain on file but our membership contains only those who have filled out a membership form in our parish. It doesn't contain those who left the church, left town, or died and if anyone asked what our membership was it would be correct within 1 to 2 percent either way.

I would imagine that most parishes are operated this way.

The information comes from the various dioceses. For example, the San Jose California diocese has around 600K baptised Catholics in its territory, but at the very most, and the diocese did a study on numbers, 100K pack the pews every Sunday, not that different from the numbers the area had 30+ years ago when it was part of the San Francisco archdiocese.

It is great some parishes do well in RCIA, hopefully they are traditional leaning, but it would be at best dis honest to say the Catholic church in the US is well because of increasing numbers, without immigration, the Catholic church would probably be under the number it had in 1970.