Posted on 03/03/2013 9:33:32 PM PST by dangus
NY Times' op-ed contributor and Georgetown professor Paul Elie says the reign of Pope Benedict has been "all bad news, all the time." Really?
Vocations, globally, are up 70% since the mid-70s.
The number of diocesan priests is at an all-time, and growing faster the number of Catholics, or the global population.
The population of Catholics in the world is growing faster than the global population, (1.5% to 1.3% per year) despite being centered in industrialized nations. Conversions to the Catholic church are at an all-time high.
The number of students in Catholic high schools has doubled globally since the 1970s, the highest proportion of Catholics going to a Catholics high school since public education became ubiquitous in the modern world.
Pope Benedict's approval ratings among American Catholics (including "fallen away" Catholics) is 74%, and among all Americans is at 62%. When was the last time an American leader ever had an approval rating that high among Americans?
The number of religious (celibate) brothers is growing for the first time since Vatican 2.
Nonetheless, the number of permanent deacons is also still exploding.
The funny thing is this data is gathered by the Center for Applied Research into the Apostolate (CARA)... at Georgetown University. You'd think Elie would know of it.
SIDE NOTE: Georgetown University is paying a professor who is writing in the New York Times not only to disparage the Pope Emeritus, but also to call Catholics to leave the church. ("If the Pope Can Quit, Catholics Can, Too.") What does a guy have to do to lose professional respect, if not get fired?
A lot.
But then again, I’m not going to enlighten you.
I really could not care less what some think.
Thank you for posting the data that way. Impressive.
Is there a breakdown at the data source for just the US?
The news, over the last few days.
Catholics CINOS are a democrat support group, they will be saving the pro-abortion democratic party.
And what are CINOS? Just like RINOS -- Catholics in Name Only; Republicans in Name Only.
Only church schools will bring this nation back through young people. What is being taught in public schools is shameful. God bless the parents for the financial sacrifice they are making.
&&&
You are so right on all counts.
Plain and simple fact:
The John Jay Study, conducted by academics and prosecutors in a non-Catholic university setting, found in 2005 that the rate of sexual abuse had dropped by 97% by 1990, long before the news media caught wind of it.
Nearly all of what is in the news over the last several years relates to abse that happened decades ago.
I’ve been saying this all along. 1 out of every 4 Americans is Catholic. I don’t know why amy one is surprised at having so many Catholics on FreeRepublic. Keep praying for our church, His church.
It won’t change the Catholic vote, in the voting booth, Catholics will continue to support the democrat party and their pro-abortion, pro-homosexual agenda.
The democratic party will be able to depend on the Catholics, forever.
Catholics do “support for the modern pro-abort, pro-sodomy, pro-euthanasia Demoncrat [misspelling intentional] party.” and always will.
The Catholic denomination produces majority democrat voters, and always will.
Simply not true, ansel12. 67% of church-going Catholics voted Republican in the last election. Only 47% of the total who call themselves Catholic did, but due to the influx of Hispanic immigrants, the majority of those who call themselves Catholic are minorities, compared to only 1 in 5 Protestants. These “Catholics” are in name only, and usually are not even captured by Church estimates of the Catholic population.
Even still, even in states such as New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Michigan, and Illinois, vast, vast majorities of Catholics voted Republican, typically in margins of greater than 30%. In these states, Protestants voted overwhelmingly Democrat. Only in the Southwest, where so-called “Catholics” are largely illegal, amnestied, and quasi-legal immigrants and their offspring did the Democrats win the Catholic vote.
Among Protestants, the Churchgoing vote is very similar to the non-churchgoing vote (78% vs. 66% for white Protestants). Among Catholics, the split is enormous (67% vs. 23%). So before getting all high and mighty about Protestants voting more Republican than Catholics, consider that Christian adherence doesn’t budge the vote of those who belong to Protestant demographic groups, but has an awesomely large effect on Catholic demographic groups.
I've heard that the more often a Catholic attends mass, the more likely said person is a faithful, practicing i.e. "real" Catholic and not just a self-professing "cafeteria" Catholic. I've also seen studies that show only 10% or so of "self-professing" Catholics actually attend mass weekly. Therefore, the number of "real Catholics" in this country is no higher than 7.5 million (i.e. one tenth of the 75 million that you claim), if that fraction is correct.
The exit polls for the last two presidential elections found that, of the most frequently attending religious group (white evangelical Protestants), 25% still voted for Obama. I'll give "real" Catholics the benefit of the doubt on this one, and credit their 7.5 million weekly-attending Catholics with that same voting percent, thus 5.6 million voted for Romney, and 1.9 voted for Obama. I've been told that any Catholic who unrepentantly voted for a pro-abortion politician has latae sententiae excommunicated themselves from the church, so there can only be 5.6 million "real" Catholics out of the weekly attending group. That's just 7.8 percent of the starting number of 75 million.
If I'm right about the "real" number being far smaller than 75 million, one could make the argument that the changing condition of our country is in direct proportion to the reduced number of Catholics therein. On the other hand, a recent thread showed that the United States has the fourth largest population of Catholics in the world (assuming the less discriminating number of 70+ million). If that number has any qualitative meaning, meaning we don't need to discriminate between "real" and "cafeteria", one could make the argument that the changing condition of our country is in direct proportion to the growth of Catholicism therein.
LOL, Dangus, yes it is true, Obama won the Catholic vote as expected, as is usual.
The Catholic vote is a democrat vote, and will always be
Do you have specific statistics that can verify your statements? I’d like to see them.
Really? You want to learn how Catholics voted in 2008 and 2012?
I read that the first five times you posted in on Free Republic. Repeating it over and over again doesn’t make it any less misleading.
You can’t just claim that members of the Catholic denomination do not vote as they do when we all know better.
In the voting booth, Catholics will continue to support the democrat party and their pro-abortion, pro-homosexual agenda.
The democratic party will be able to depend on the Catholics, forever.
Thank-you for making my day with that posting.
This is the beauty of threads such as this, different viewpoints and opinions.
A good word about the Church.
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