Replies

Damon Linker, in an essay predicting that all churches would need to change doctrines to keep up with the modern world, especially the Catholic Church. Refusing to adapt doctrine to modern thought will force an exodus of people from their faiths....Furthermore, the Church’s role isn’t to change with the times anyway. It’s to defend what it teaches as revealed truth, and to spread the truth rather than take polls. That may indeed produce an impulse for congregants to leave, but that may be a symptom of poor catechesis rather than a refusal to change doctrine to suit the modern temperament. If an exodus occurs, that would be the cause, not a refusal to rewrite doctrine.

According to David E. Campbell and Robert D. Putnam in American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, the Roman Catholic Church is "hemorrhaging members." The Pew Forum's 2007 "U.S. Religious Landscape Survey" found that Catholics have experienced the greatest net loss of any American religious tradition. Although Latinos are now the church's most faithful and orthodox members, church leaders have been worried about their exodus for over a decade. The numbers show a more diverse—and if immigration slows, a smaller—Roman Catholic Church in the coming years. Faithful immigrant Catholics have enabled the Catholic Church to keep a steady 25 percent of the American population, but as immigrants come in, young people and second-generation Latinos trickle out.
-- from the thread Mass exodus

ah Alex,

found another thread so you could bash Catholics with your anti-Catholic bigotry.

Wrong again Alex!

The following real statistics puts the lie to your hogwash.

UNITED STATES

DATA OVER TIME: .1965 .1975 .1985 .1995 .2000 .2005 .2013

Catholic population 45.6m 48.7m 52.3m 57.4m 59.9m 64.8m 66.8m
(The Official Catholic Directory)

Catholic population 48.5m 54.5m 59.5m 65.7m 71.7m 74.0m 78.2m
(self-identified, survey-based)

WORLD

DATA OVER TIME: .1970 ..1975 ..1985 ..1995 ...2000 ...2005 ....2013

Catholic population 653.6m 709.6m 852.0m 989.4m 1.045b 1.115b 1.196b

SOURCE: CARA Georgetown
http://cara.georgetown.edu/caraservices/requestedchurchstats.html

CARA gets many inquiries from Church agencies and the media about the numbers for vocations, seminary enrollments, priests and vowed religious, parishes, Mass attendance, schools and the Catholic population. Below are some comparative statistics from 1965. Generally, these data reflect the situation at the beginning of the calendar year listed. The sources for this information include The Official Catholic Directory (OCD), the Vatican’s Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae (ASE), and other CARA research and databases. All data are cross checked as much as possible. For the U.S, the numbers reported here include only figures for those 195 dioceses or eparchies who belong to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. This includes the 50 states, the District of Columbia, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and all U.S. military personnel stationed overseas. This page also includes links to other areas of the CARA website that provide answers to frequently asked questions.

For more information about CARA research and statistics, including our national and parish surveys, demographic studies, trend analyses and projections, and focus groups visit CARA Services. For more information about CARA’s beginings read the following Review of Religious Research article from 1967 by Francis X. Gannon entitled, “Bridging the Research Gap: CARA, Response to Vatican II.”

AMDG
For the Greater Glory of God