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To: thor76
With regard to actual raw statistical data about parish ethnicity - there is none! The "Status Annuarium" does not ask you to count how many black, Asian, Hispanic or other you have attending.

Its relatively straightforward to compare total parish registration versus the census profile of the parish boundaries. In neighborhoods where one ethnicity predominates with 90% or more of the population, this makes it very easy to determine how many roughly of the dominant group are registered. My own archdiocese, Philadelphia, does this on their website. They also break down Parish registration by ethnicity.

See here:

http://www.archdiocese-phl.org/parishes/index.html

Pick an area then a Parish, then click on Census Report 2 under each Parish. For example, St. Hugh of Cluny, in the heart of the Barrio, has 3860 Hispanics registered, who represent just 32% of the total living in the Parish's boundaries.

If you add up the number of registered Hispanics in the city versus the number actually residing in the city, you will readily find it is but a small fraction of the total. (Of course, the same thing can frequently be said about other supposedly Catholic ethnic groups, such as the Irish.)

I agree with your comments about the jitterbug liturgies offered to blacks. I knew many blacks in Philadelphia who were of the High Church mindset, and they were almost all Episcopalian. The domination of the Irish around here hardly helps.

55 posted on 07/21/2004 11:52:04 AM PDT by Hermann the Cherusker
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To: Hermann the Cherusker
OK - given the lack of real "raw" numbers (i.e. exactly how many whites, blacks, Hispanics, etc. actually attend mass in a parish), your method would yield some interesting answers - but not entirely accurate ones. This is not your fault, or anyone else's. One must realize that census data is far from being 100% accurate for the simple reason that everybody does not answer the census, much less honestly. If I were a family of illegal aliens I would probably not answer it out of fear - many do this. Some do not give truthful responses because they resent the increasingly complicated and invasive questions asked. Heck - I personally never got a form in the last two censuses!!! Nobody came to my door either!
Also we still have the issue of unregistered parishioners. I have been one of those, and I know I am not alone..."known but to God"! Also, I am one of many Catholics who does not live in the boundaries of the church I attend mass at. And I am certainly not alone in that!
However, I accept what you say as a way - flawed though it may be - of determining the ethnic breakdown of parish populations, as these methods you raise are the best available.
57 posted on 07/21/2004 2:56:39 PM PDT by thor76 (Vade retro, Draco! Crux sacra sit mihi lux!)
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