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?
Translated, your posts all read as the following:
“Don’t start spouting facts at me! I want to believe my uninformed presumptions, because I need them to sustain my biases!”
Catholics are a democrat support group, they will be saving the pro-abortion democratic party.
Only “Easter and Christmas Catholics” are. Those going to mass every week are not. Check your facts first.
No dangus, the facts are as I presented them, the Catholic vote is a pro-abortion, pro-homosexual agenda, pro-democrat vote.
I think we all agree that the democrats can depend on winning the catholic vote forever, the left is depending on it.
Yes, baptized members of the Catholic denomination, the Catholic voters, will be supporting the democrat party forever, the left is counting on it.
Those are the facts.
Georgetown University’s CARA Institute finds that about 25% of Catholics attend every week. Gallup finds that about 40% of Catholics attend mass in a given week. I would find either of those reasonable estimates of who I would call “real Catholics.” But by either of these measures, Christians in general are a small minority of the total U.S. population.
There are clse to as many Catholics as all Protestant, Baptist, Anglican, and marginal Christian or non-denominational churches combined (23-25%), but are outnumbered by “other Christians.”
You’re probably thinking that’s crazy, and it is in a way: Non-active Catholics continue to identify as Catholics, but former members of other Christian denominations quit identifying particularly with one denomination. And the majority of Americans no longer identify with any particular sect.
This means if you poll Catholic vs. Non-Catholic, or church-going Catholic vs. church-going Protestant, you’ll get fairly similar results. If, on the other hand poll Catholic vs. Protestant, you’ll find the Catholic vote is significantly further to the left.
Translation: Giving what is viewed more as one poster’s opinion dressed as a fact.
Gallup finds that about 40% of Catholics attend mass in a given week.
Those are two very different statistics, and I would caution you not to confuse the two. The second says that on any given Sunday, any 40% of the total are attending mass. but it does not say the same 40% of the total are attending mass on every given Sunday. I do not recall at the moment where I got the 10% number I was using, but I have a feeling it was related to daily attendance, not weekly.
I would find either of those reasonable estimates of who I would call “real Catholics.” But by either of these measures, Christians in general are a small minority of the total U.S. population.
The question I raised, in response to mgist's earlier post, is whether there are really 75 million Catholics in the United States, or (recalculating with your 25% attendance number) whether there are actually 14 million "real" Catholics, with the other 61 million being "Catholics in name only" and nothing worth bragging about. And yes, I think we can make similar calculations using any Protestant denomination.
Ultimately, I think we would agree that "real" Christians in general are a small minority of the total U.S. population, and that recent elections have gone the way they have because the "real" Christians are being outvoted.
Hi Iscool,Do you have names?God bless our priests.
Thank-you for making my day!
Thanks for a reasoned response to my short-tempered one. They are two different statistics, and that’s why I posted both of them, and that’s why they don’t match. However, as you probably know from your own congregation, it’s the same people every week. The people who answer that they went to mass last week, but that they don’t make it every week are confessing a sinful tendency; if they didn’t think mass was important, they wouldn’t go at all. (No-one would ever accuse someone of going to Catholic mass for the entertainment.)
The point is that they value their church, as opposed to the fifty percent who never make it to church and never try. And I think it would be unfair to call these, “Catholics in Name Only.”
At 70 million Catholics church members, Catholic church members outnumber all Protestant church members combined, using the broadest possible definition of “Protestant.” But I would never claim that the majority of Christians in America are Catholic. My larger point was that you should compare active Catholics to active Protestants, or all Catholics to all non-Catholic people who call themselves Christians.
Frankly, I think that the fact that mass attendance correlates with increasing the share of pro-life voting from 23% to 67% to be absolutely astounding. And it’s actually better than I stated: the 78% of “church-going Protestants” who voted for Romney was actually only “church-going white evangelicals.” The 67% of Catholics included church-going Catholics, including the 18% of church-goers who are Hispanic (yes, only 18%. Only 38% of Hispanic immigrants are Catholic at all), 10% who are asian, and 4% who are black.
Voting data is very strict on the definition of Catholics, only counting those who are baptized members of that single denomination.
Protestants are just Christian but not Catholic, that includes people who don't belong to any church and have never been baptized, or who may have not even ever set foot in a church, it is just that they believe in Christ, it includes Episcopalians and lesbian ministers and all flavors of people, not only are they not limited to a single denomination under a single authority, it does include many who have never had a church or any denomination's teachings.
That isn't so, PEW gives the American population as 51.3% Protestant, and 23.9% Catholic, making up a total of the 75.2% of the 78.4% Christian total.
Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, and the Orthodox making up the odd percent.
That’s my POINT! They identify themselves as non-Catholic Christian, but NOT as a particular denomination (or as non-denominationalist). And they don’t belong to a church. See the Yearbook of the National Council of Churches; the 25% I cite is the sum of all denominations PLUS the total who claim to be non-denominationalist.
“Total church membership reported in the 2011 Yearbook is 145,838,339 members, down 1.05 percent over 2010.”
“1. The Catholic Church, 68,503,456 members, up .57 percent. “
That leaves 77 million non-Catholic Christian church members. Minus 4 million Orthodox, that leaves 73 million. Out of 290 million people 5+ years old, that’s 23% Catholic and 25% Protestant. And about 60-70 million “Christians” who belong to no church.
The point is, that they are Protestants and are counted as such in voting data.
Protestant is a much more inclusive category than the tight one of being a baptized member of the strongly authoritarian, strongly led, Catholic denomination.
A Protestant voter can be someone who not only isn’t a regular church goer, but someone who has never even been in a church, or baptized, but believes in Christ, or who belongs to a gay church, or whatever, yet as a whole, non-catholic Christians, (Protestants) are far to the right of Catholics and are never won by the democrats.
You don't get it, half of America is Protestant, those Christians who don't belong to a church, are Protestants.
There are more than twice as many Protestants as Catholics in America, or republicans would never win an election.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.