Free Republic

rst Things The Denomination Called Catholic David R. Carlin Copyright (c) 1997 First Things 77 (November 1997): 18-21. By now, nearly everyone has heard the statistics. From the end of Vatican II in 1965 to the present, the American Catholic Church has experienced dramatic drops in attendance at Sunday Mass, per capita contributions, the number of Catholic elementary and secondary schools, the population of priests and nuns, enrollment in seminaries and religious orders, the circulation of Catholic periodicals. Many Catholic colleges and universities, it is true, have held their own and even prospered, but their success has come in many...