[Titanites]

US Catholic growth, not shrinkage.

[Titanites]

This may be of interest.

[netmilsmom]

No one will believe this unless you get a source other than a Catholic source.

[jtal]

While I would love to think this was due to evangelization or separated brethren coming to see the Truth of the Catholic faith, it is more likely due to illegal Mexican immigration.

Many (most?) of our bishops are far too milquetoast for any effective evangelization or any other task requiring real leadership.

[marshmallow]

Whether we're up 2%, down 5% or doomed in Buffalo, one thing is for certain; the sex abuse scandal has not been the death of Catholicism in the USA as some had predicted (read.....hoped). On the contrary, it is a long needed purification.

Numbers ebb and flow.......people come and go.........the Church remains always the same.

[RnMomof7]

US Catholic growth, not shrinkage.

This compares apples and oranges..

Catholics consider a baptized infant a a member .

Protestants churches do not offer membership to minors. There are membership requirements and a covenant between the church and member.

As you find with Catholics, membership and attendance are 2 different things ... Only about 20% of Catholics are actually attending or active in their church ..

Whereas in most Protestant churches less than 1/2 of those attending are members..

That is a huge difference in the way the statistics have to be looked at.. Our church has about 150 members but around 300 attending on a Sunday .

So a more accurate picture is attendance as opposed to membership

[Rosie405]

There IS a difference b/t being an official member of the church (with your name in the church’s computer database), and being an official member who is also a regular, pledging attendee. The problem is that many of these churches rarely purge those rolls, so oftentimes the numbers are in fact wildly inaccurate. This is true not only in Catholicism, but in several of the Protestant denoms as well.

[narses]

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[afraidfortherepublic]

Our report wasn’t so rosy. I don’t have it here, but as I remember:

Parish about 2500 families — up
Upwardly mobile parish
About 800 are “elderly”
Young parish
Only 11 marriages last year (very poor showing and bodes ill for the future)

Can’t remember all the other stats, but the dearth of marriages is of great concern. That means that young people are not bothering to get married, or that they are marrying outside the church.

[Clemenza]

1. What is the racial makeup of this growth and how many of this growth was due to native-born Catholic parents?

2. Rate of mass attendance please.