>>The $64,000 question is this: where are they getting these numbers<<
Parish registration, for certain. Doesn't mean they go to church every week, but does mean they probably at least go for Christmas and Easter.
>> Secondly: are they counting all the illegal aliens from Central & South America who are overwhelmingly Catholic? <<
Not sure, but possibly. Certainly, immigration is fueling the growth in the numbers of Catholics. Most of the largest sources of immigrants certainly are nominally Catholic nations (Mexico, etc.), but some are very irreligious (Mexico, Central America, etc.) while others are very devout (the Philippines).
I have a friend just back from Honduras who reports that no-one in Tegulcipada was even familiar with the concept of a marriage, so I imagine immigrants from such places don't remain identified as Catholics very long.
In eastern Somerville, MA, the population is at least 70% Hispanic and Brazilian; but the Catholic Church is devoid of any worshippers. The only Christian influences are a few store-front Pentecostalist churches.
On Long Island, most of the Hispanic population is Puerto Rican; they tend to at least maintain ties to Church.
From what I hear, LA Chicanos are mostly Marxist with only peripheral cultural ties to the Catholic Church, while in Texas, although the churches themselves are polluted by a dominant liberation theology, the Tex-Mexes are still more faithful. (These would seem to be the Bush Hispanics?)
In my present parish, attendance is very poor, considering the large number of Hispanics. (The area is 50% Hispanic, and only 20% of Anglos are Catholic, yet the Spanish mass has room to sit, and the four English masses are SRO.) The response is of course to condescend, so the Spanish masses are a three-ring circus.
>> American citizens who are Catholic are contracepting, aborting, and sodomizing themselves to death in the sense that they now have a low birthrate. The ongoing nonsense in the church inspires most of them to stay home on Sunday, not contribute....much less do the young in any serious number want to commit their lives to the church as priests of religious.<<
That definitely aptly describes Boston, but not red-state Catholics.
Parish registration, for certain. Doesn't mean they go to church every week, but does mean they probably at least go for Christmas and Easter.
I agree with much of your assessment, Though, from personal experience, many pastors will inflate the figures to make themselves look better to their chancery offices.
Assuming they are telling the truth, the white & black Catholic polulation is decreasing in proportion due to the vast growth off illegal Hispanic Catholics here. But - you are very correct to say that not all of them go to mass. Many are hardly devout, in any real sense of the word. Through Marxist influence in their homelands, they are "baptize, marry, and bury" Catholics - if that!
Many Catholic immigrants - from all countries - come here for freedom FROM religion. They are only cultural catholics back home, and are just here for the $$$. Filipinos are notable excpetions, as a group.
Traditionalism among recent immigrants is squashed by apostate priests, who purposely make Spanish masses into "alleluia ministry" with the maximum amoutn of noise, screaming, gross disrespect, etc. If you query these priests, they will tell you that "this is what the people like/expect". Well, of course - when that is the only menu offered to them!!!
Whatever genuine, orthodox, real Catholicism may exist in the hearts of recent immigrants, is being weaned away from them. So that they will fall away from the faith, and their children will follow suit. Voting? Well, that is obvious: do just what HolaMTV tells you to do!!!