Virtually every heavily Catholic country is very impoverished compared to heavily Protestant ones.
All you have to do is look at countries like the Philipines, Mexico, Colombia, any South American country for that matter. And many of those countries have great wealth in natural resources. Colombia has gold and emeralds, for example.
History bears out the same thing. Where did the industrial revolution take off? It was northern Europe where most of the progress was made.
Here's something interesting. Over the weekend I was reading in the Wall Street Journal how Latin America is just now beginning to emerge out of the 18th century Roman Catholic-inspired doldrums and is starting to show signs of becoming industrialized. Specifically Brazil is seen as the engine of growth.
And the responsibility for this progress is being laid to the fact that Rome is receding in these countries while Pentecostalism and Reformed Christianity are taking hold of minds, bodies and spirits, revitalizing economies as well as individual lives.
Isn't that a positive thought?
So? Christ taught that prosperity decreases chaces of salvation. It is absurd to defend Protestant heresies with economics; that the "gospel of prosperity" couild be invented in the first place condemns your theology.
Protestant countries like Zimbabwe, Congo, Malawi, Namibia, Papua New Guinea, Rawanda, Swaziland, and Tuvala?
That's actually false. The industrial revolution took off in the triangle between Paris, London and Amsterdam with most inventions being in England (Anglican), France (Catholic) and the Netherlands (Calvinist and Catholic -- the Catholic part, Belgium broke away in 1830)
If you look at Germany, the most heaviest concentration of industry was and IS in the Catholic provinces in the South -- Bavaria and the Ruhr areas.