Posted on 07/06/2009 7:43:52 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Assuming also that the survey was done and reported in a legitimate manner and without an agenda.
**(% of Hispanic Catholics has dropped)**
No it hasn’t. They are still Catholics. They may have been led astray for awhile, but they will be back.
Evidently you are not familiar with the truth of the Catholic Church?
Do you read a bible? You got it from the Catholic Church.
Do you say a Creed at your Church — either the Apostle’s Creed or the Nicene Creed? You got it from the Catholic Church.
Do you honor the twelve apostles? You got them from the Catholic Church.
The Catholic Church is the one, holy, apostlic and Catholic Church.
Everything else flows from the Catholic Church.
Read the thread — How Old Is Your Church.
Columbus discovered an island, not the continental US. By the way, Columbus never set foot on the North American continent, only Central and South America. Interestingly, bastardized-Catholic traditions still abound throughout those areas.
Heh, Catholics of all stripes only make up 23.9% of the US population.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholicism_in_the_United_States#By_percentage_of_Catholics
Protestants make up 51% of the US population.
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5h7rc3tC9fKhoJW6X9PV6ZmG2BIng
The remaining Protestant groups in the U.S. (Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, etc.) can't agree on anything (oftentimes within their own denomination!) except agreeing on the Catholic church is wrong. The largest of these Protestant groups (Baptists) dominate American culture only in the deep south.
As a result, during at least the last 100 years, Catholicism has dominated America's religious culture more than any other religious group. For example, Fr. Coughlin, Bishop Fulton, Mother Angelica, etc. had an enormous influence on the American psyche that simply wouldn't have been possible in a strongly protestant nation. (When protestant leaders have mass influence in the U.S., they tend to be types that reach across ALL denominations of Christians, like Billy Graham) To see how much Catholicism dominates, look no further than our current Supreme Court and Congress. Furthermore, when you look across the U.S. from coast to coast, you will discover the Catholic church is the largest Christian group in something like 40 out of 50 states now. Even looking back at the numbers in 1990, Catholicism was clearly dominant in most parts of the U.S.:
Add to the fact that the vast majority of the founding fathers were Episcopalian (who, as mentioned before, teaches a form of Christianity almost identical to Catholicism), and the culture of America's Christians leans much stronger towards Catholicism than say, Greece, where 98% of the population is Eastern Orthodox Christians, or most of Europe for that matter.
Bottom line is this: a Hispanic in say, Georgia, who switches from Catholic to say, Methodist, will probably find himself more in sync with the local religious traditions. Not so for a Hispanic who becomes a Protesant in New York, Illinois, California, New Jersey, Colorado, Florida, Wisconsin, Mass., Ohio, or anywhere else in the vast streches of middle America. For example here in the Chicago area, 60-70% of the population is Catholic. Catholicism is in the news and affects the culture far more prominently than protestantism here.
Well, believing the Pope matters at all only matters to Catholics, so, yes, my numbers include them.
However, if you don't think the Pope means squat, then I will let you take them as your numbers, considering as all they tell the Pope to go screw himself, but they still maintain “90%” of the traditions of Catholics.
Catholics are a paltry minority in this country. However, they were incredibly instrumental in getting 0bama elected.
Religious preference by state, 2001. Catholicism is also largest denomination in Alaska and Hawaii (not pictured), and the largest plurality religious in the gray states where No Religion dominates.
Yes, a majority of Catholics did vote for our protestant president (whose protestant church, as you can tell from the new reports, is about as far away as "mainstream" Christianity in America as you can get). Of course you neglect to mention that a majority of Catholics ALSO voted for George W. Bush. You also notice the key point in the Catholic vote that pertains to this article -- Obama ONLY won the "Catholic vote" because of Hispanic CINOs (you know, the ethnic group that this article mentions is becoming protestant far more often now). Take away "hispanic Catholics", and the remaining Catholics voted AGAINST Obama. So if those liberal "hispanic Catholics" want no more part of our church, so be it. If you protestants want our pro-abortion, pro-socialist, pro-Obama Hispanics, you're welcome to them.
I think the growth in Hispanic Protestants is due to evangelical outreach to them. I remember learning awhile back about Cardinal Mahoney when he was a new priest. He learned in the Stockton, CA area that migrant workers did not attend the local Catholic church because they felt unwelcomed by the parishioners who were permanent residents. But the Jehoval Witnesses came right out to the fields to preach to them. So, the pastor that Mahoney was working for started heading out to the fields himself. The migrants said they considered themselves Catholic, but would settle for the JWs when that’s the only people who showed up. I think there are a lot of churches who want those people, and go out and get them. I am grateful that Catholics do not seem to do the heavy-handed recruiting that I have seen some Protestants do, but on the other hand I think Catholics are too reticent to spread the Good News. I think pastors are mainly concerned with serving the people they’ve already got, and lay people don’t want to stick their neck out in that way. Anyway, at this rate, maybe the priest shortage isn’t going to be a problem, because the congregations will be getting smaller. :(
There was a deep strain of hatred of the Catholic Church, among the Founding Fathers.
“The “American tradition” has been Catholicism since the 1840s. It hasn’t been protestantism for 160 years, even since there were massive wave of immigration from Ireland”
From the mid-19th Century up until the mid-20th Century, the Roman Catholic Church was seen as an ethnic church- Its services were not conducted in the language of this country, and its membership was dominated by people who tended to isolate themselves in urban immigrant neighborhoods such as “Little Italy”. World War 2 and the subsequent mass exodus to the suburbs are what changed all of that. Vatican II also helped by making it easier for people who were not born and raised Catholic to join up.
Buddy, Protestants make up 51% of the US population.
Catholics are 24% of the US population.
So, the “universal church” is the minority of those professing faith in Christ.
marker
So basically, the more liberal the state, the more Catholics there are.
That speaks volumes.
You might also notice that in Europe, the heavily protestantized western european countries, where Protestianism began (scandavia, U.K., Switzerland, etc.) are all socialist, whereas eastern europe countries that are overwhemingly Catholic (Poland, Czech Republic, etc.), are free-market, conservative nations. So oops, looks like your little theory goes down the drain again.
You are right that Hispanic "Catholics" tend to be extremely left-wing socialists though.
So enjoy your new members!
If they ever got in tune with beliefs of the religion they were born into (and the religion Christ started), they'd find it closer to their concept of Christ than what the Protestants sold them.
Have you noticed that regularly, WEEKLY church attending Catholics voted AGAINST Obama by a rather solid margin? Hmmm. I wonder why. Attending Obama's protestant church on a weekly basis just indoctrinates his congregation into the socialist, anti-American mindset further. Unlike Catholicism, there's no great likelihood that attending a Protestant church on a weekly basis will increase a person's likelihood of opposing evils in society. It all depends on what kind of Protestant church you go to. (there are plenty of them where the most active members preach that abortion is a-okay and so is gay marriage) Whereas with Catholics, it depends on whether you are faithful to what your church teaches.
Also, you will note the vast majority of people who switch from Catholic to Protestant do so in order to get a more liberal church because the Catholics are "cramping their style", whereas the vast majority of people who switch from Protestant to Catholic do so because their church got too liberal (like the mass exodus on parishes from the Episcopal church after they ordained that openly gay bishop).
If Hispanics are switching to "Christian" churches like Jehovah's Witnesses (who don't even accept the basic Christian doctrine of the trinity), my guess is they're cafeteria Catholics looking for a more liberal denomination that lets them do as they please. If they seriously examine themselves and decide to live in a way that Christ taught, they'd rejoin the Catholic fold.
“I think the roots of the US are Roman Catholic. “
And many of those roots were as a result of old-world religious persecution of Protestant faithful, would you not agree? (I don’t think you will....)
The poverty and social attitudes of the underclass in Latin America also can in part be traced to the Catholicism and has partly lead to their mass migration to the US.
I will agree with you on the weekly attending Catholics voting for conservatives over liberals.
Unfortunately, all the rest of the Catholics overwhelm that minority.
No, in my lifetime, all the Protestants that I’ve known who have gone “Catholic” are liberals or “moderates” in their political thinking.
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