Interesting. Like what? I know in our town Roman Catholic schools are closing or consolidating. At the parochial high school my husband attended enrollment is way down.
Same thing is happening here. Schools and Catholic Churches are closing or merging. Sad in a way for those who have worshipped in those churches all their lives.
School closings and/or consolidating is one of them. The parochial school we went to as kids (up to the 12th grade) is no longer. The church, which we visited two years ago up in Minnesota, is alien, both in practices and ethnics. Most of the individuals that now go there are not european but hispanic - and they have brought in some of their own pagan beliefs and mixed it up with catholicism. The music is something else :-) It hurts the ears it is so loud, and the singing is a mixture of English and Hispanic and something else - can't really make it out. St. Matthews church is no longer German ethnic, but a form of Spanish: same as St. Michaels church.
Both of the above churches look down on European ethnic people, even to the point of telling them to go to another church where they belong (This was told to my wife!). Yes, we still visit various churches to see what they are now like. I guess it's just our curiosity to see how they are doing now. I think it would benefit many Christians if they would visit Catholic churches and see for themselves what it is like for Catholics. There is nothing like getting to know the other side of the argument :-)
Being retired affords me time to be a part time employee of the Census with a $10 an hour job - nothing like the income I received in my previous job. When doing the odd years Census questioning, for odd questions in my opinion, one gets to visit people and ask those odd question; for what purpose evades me. As for the religious type questions, it's only the church attendance and denomination that is marked down, but during the visit I usually ask follow-up questions more to the point of affiliation. That is when I realized that the results reported are not really true. We see and hear things that shows many are not really telling the truth - but we don't report that on the form. I'm sure that many other part time census takers have other stories to tell :-)
Actually, the percentages are basically guesswork figures, for they don't report actual figures, but just poll-type figures. And who really believes the polls? Not me.
There is more, but my fingers are tired...