[GenXteacher]

There is some truth in this article. Twenty years ago you scarcely ever met someone who was Catholic down here. Then when the Yankees started coming, that changed- that, and the Mexicans....

[frogjerk]

Thank you Mother Angelica!

[aMorePerfectUnion]

Illegal immigrants? Legal immigrants? Relocated Yankees?

Unless these are conversions to Catholicism, why is this significant?

[WayneS]

Catholicism in the South growing

Good. Maybe it can get rid of that annoying kudzu...

;-)

[johngrace]

I moved here from the North. I have never seen so many dedicate christians in my life. I am in between two catholic churches from my home which are overflowing. There will be a conservative catholic bible scholars conference
this week.

[ansel12]

The problem for me is that the Catholic vote goes for Democrats, so this is not something that benefits conservatism.

In fact the real fear of conservatives, is that states like Texas go in the direction of the Catholic vote, like California did.

[Salvation]

The migration trends I note above are long-term but just look at the short-term effects below of the recession on mobility for two counties. The top image is for those leaving (red) and coming to (black) the county which includes the city of Cleveland in 2008 (the source is IRS data and the image is generated from Forbes). The bottom image shows the same for the county including the city of Atlanta. As one can see some of Cleveland’s population loss has been Atlanta’s gain (note we do not know the religion of any of the individuals in the IRS data).

In 2001, the Archdiocese of Atlanta had more than 320,000 Catholics, 131 active diocesan priests, and 77 parishes (note in 1991, the Archdiocese had 176,000 Catholics and 65 parishes). Moving a decade ahead, the diocese now has 900,000 Catholics, 141 active diocesan priests, and 87 parishes. Thus, the number of Catholics increased by 181% in the last decade but the number priests only increased by 8% and the number of parishes by 13%. This means the number of Catholics per parish in the Archdiocese has grown from 4,156 in 2001 to 10,345 in 2011. Ten new parishes have been added to accommodate 580,000 additional Catholics. I certainly do not mean to sound critical in any way of the Archdiocese of Atlanta. In fact this Archdiocese is one of the few that has added significant numbers of parishes in recent years. Thus, even where the needs are recognized and growth is occurring, the arch/dioceses doing the most to focus on new construction still tend to be a bit behind the pace of the rapidly changing distribution of the Catholic population in the United States.

[narses]

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