The faithful are abandoning the Church in droves!
The number of priests is plummeting!
The number of seminarians is spiraling downward!
The number of nuns has dropped!
Right?
Well, the number of nuns has dropped, but the rest of that is just wrong.
I remember back in my Evangelical days, it was a well-accepted fact that the Catholic Church was on its last legs, with people abandoning it in droves, losing more and more ever year.
Funny how things change when you check the facts.
Certainly, there are problems in the Church (always have been; cf. Epistles of St. Paul). The Church did take a big hit after Vatican II. And we’re a long way from where we should be.
But we’re actually growing. Worldwide.
As is the number of priests and seminarians.
The evidence for this—or rather, a summary of it—is found in a work the Holy See produces each year called the Annuario Pontifico (Pontifical Yearbook). Among other things, it collects Catholic statistics from around the world. The newest edition of it came out last Saturday.
So what did it say?
Globally, an increase in the Catholic population of 19 million, for a total of 1,166,000,000 Catholics, or 17.4 percent of global population.
“Yes,” you say sagely, “but 19 million is just a raw number, and the number of Catholics could be going up and yet the Church could still be shrinking in terms of percent of global population.”
But it’s not. The previous year’s Annuario showed the Church at only 17.33 percent of global population, so the increase was not just an increase in raw numbers but in percentage of overall population as well. In other words: The Catholic population is growing faster than the world population.
“Good!” you say, ‘but surely the Catholic population is shrinking here in the U.S.”
Noooo. Though I don’t have numbers from the new edition of the Annuario, according to the 2009 Official Catholic Directory (the Kenedy directory) for the U.S., the number of Catholics in this country increased by a million over the course of the year, maintaining the overall Catholic percentage of the population here.
“What about priests and seminarians?”
They’re up, too, worldwide. According to the new Annuario there were an additional 4,000 priests worldwide between 2000 and 2008 (the most recent year of the Annuario’s data), for a total of 409,166 priests. And in just one year (2007-2008) the number of seminarians jumped by 1,000 (total: 117,024).
The number of consecrated religious, of both sexes, did drop from 2000 to 2008, hemorrhaging 40,000 and dropping the total to 739,067.
There are still lots of problems the Church has to face, but imminent extinction isn’t one of them.
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Newspapers, who seem to love lecturing the Church about the need to modernize, lost 10% of their circulation last year while Catholicism grew. That has to drive them crazy.
Good news when considering the predominate media supposition that religion, especially orthodox Christian, is out of fashion.
Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing how many of those hundreds of millions of Catholic actually practice the faith. Some of those 1.166 billion Catholics are actually strongly anti-Catholic. The Vatican updates its almanac, I assume, with numbers provided by diocese of how many people they baptized and received into the Catholic Church. The number of people who have stopped going to Mass altogether (and even renounced Catholicism) is not recorded.
Chrysologus
http://chrysologus.blogspot.com
Matt,
Excellent example!
The Catholic Church is a hypocrital religious dinosaur and it needs to either reform or just fade away and die.
Sandra,
Priests, bishops, and popes have tried and failed.
The gates of Hell shall never prevail against the Bride of Christ!
The Catholic Church is not hypocrite as Sandra Couch has commented. It holds on to the same stool of faith for ever. For example she did not change rules on homosexuality even though a protestant denomination consecrated a gay bishop. She did not sanction premarital sex as desireable though the media and secularists plead for such freedom. Though she knows that there are cases of breach by the anointed ones she has not abandoned her teachings on sex. Let it be understood that the faith of any real believer does not depend on the activities of some priests or others. We catholics believe in Jesus and His teachigs. Let us punish the guilty and pray for their conversion. God knows the heart of everyone and He only can judge. Let us not be carried away by antichristian media who struggle hard to throw mud on the Church and its Pope and its priests and its people.
I’m not sure what the point is of talking about people leaving, if for no other reason than that they could come back. Besides, they’re obviously being replaced by lots of people like myself coming in, leaving the Episcopal church and other Protestant churches, among others. It seems that the talk about loss has some ulterior motive.
As an adult convert, I am proud to be one of those who’ve grown the Church, and will say that its moral witness spoke loudly to me.
So why should we trust any document produced by the Catholic Hegemony, EVER! Including the gospels and the “history” of the early church. I would bet that Catholics have killed more innocent people in their quest for world domination than all of the combatants in all of the wars. Ask the Cathars - oops, they were all killed for not following the revealed word of god. How can a mythical, spiritual, made-up being reveal anything?
Art,
If you really truly believe that then so be it.
God is merciful and you’ll have an opportunity to repent for your sins.
God is merciful? Selective reading of your “holy” BOOK, no doubt…
These statistics are total BS. I was baptized and raised as a Catholic but I’ve been a Secular Humanist for quite some time now. I also know many, many people people who are atheists yet the church still lumps us all under the “Catholic” column of their imaginary database. Just because people have been baptized doesn’t mean that they are Catholic or will remain catholic forever. The RCC is dying and there is nothing anyone can do about it. No uber-conservative institution can survive for long in the 21st century. Newer generations will soon show how weak the church really.
Art,
No doubt.
Jesmond,
If the Church can survive Attila the Hun and several bad popes then it can certainly survive an angry atheist keyboard-brave warrior such as yourself.
Tito,
Keep feeding your delusions. The Catholic Church is just an outdated, corrupted and evil institution. It can’t survive humanism.
Gates of Hell meet Jesmond.
And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against.
—- Holy Gospel of Saint Matthew 16:18
Why do people always quote the bible when I say that the Catholic church is evil. Ok, two can play that game:
“But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea…” (Matthew 18:6-9 )
In the meantime y’all are supporting a pedophile-enabling institution. You obviously don’t care about the thousands of children who had their future taken away. All you care about are silly men dressed in robes and pointy hats. You support a Pope who allowed these children to suffer. You support a Pope who told Africa that using condoms will make the aids epidemic a bigger problem. You support a Pope who preaches hate and intolerance. what do you think your Jesus would have said if he met him? If you had any real principles and moral values you would drag him out of his castle, strip him out of his gold robes and put him in the stocks. Shame on you. You hypocrites. The whole world is judging you.
Peace out.
“It holds on to the same stool of faith for ever.” You just can’t make this !@#$% up!
there is probably a increase in priests because the pervert molester rapists are coming out of the closet! digusting that anyone can continue to believe in this crap. This is coming from a confirmed catholic who has awakened to this horrible money grubbing tax avading cult!
It says the church will be ridiculed and demonized in the last days, so this doesn’t at all suprise me. I’m soon to become a new recruit to the Catholic church, although I won’t be counted until next year.
In other words: The Catholic population is growing faster than the world population.
“Good!” you say, ‘but surely the Catholic population is shrinking here in the U.S.”
Ummm, no I don’t. Organized religion is wrong, no one has the right to tell people how they should believe in God.
The catholic church is dying in Europe! Catholic buildings are being remade into mosques! Why do you lie?
In doing my research for my upcoming time travel novel. The re[utable sources gave me the following figure. For each and every priest there has ever existed, forty-four people were murdered. You can arguew that my book is fiction, but at least you will know who wrote it. And my work of fiction will be far more coerent than the “gospels”.
True, the number of Catholics in America is increasing, but this reflects directly the rise of Hispanics, a highly superstitious people,in the country. I went to a Catholic high school and can think of only a handful of classmates who still go to churc h. I for one can no longer accept the medieval nonsense and fabrications (read: holy water,purgatory, infantile confessions, saint worship, mortal and veniel, the 7 sacraments, etc., etc.)the church continues to represent.
The true Church, faithful to object Holy Spirit and bible given truth is not. The “me me me, selfish Church, yes that is a death culture, so if you want to do what you want and consequences to all be dammed then, leave the Church, go do your thing and see how well that works out. Hey it’s working great for the whole of society isn;t it? Not.
So, let’s follow the 2,000 years of lemmings who have jumped off of the Catholic Church’s Idiot Cliff (CCIC), which is the church’s response to anything that Science has thought up in the preceeding 2,000 years. Or my novel “Legacy - The End of Not Knowing” which will be out as soon as I can pen the great American sience fction Time Travel/ Teleportation Novel.
I’m a former catholic who left the church because I just can’t accept the Medieval nonsense (the value of holy water, Purgatory, mortal and venial sins, infant baptisms, etc)it teaches.
And, quite frankly, I can’t see why anybody with more than an 8th grade education and a little curiosity doesn’t feel the same way.
The fact is that internally most people yearn for God or some form of belief system. Athiesm is just another belief system. What I find interesting is the kind of advertising that is aimed at Athiests versus Catholics. Advertising toward Catholics is generally about donating to the poor or other social need. Advertising toward Athiests is generally material things such as video games, books about Athiesm, dating services etc. What do the advertisers know that we are ignoring. The selfish are, in fact, the Athiests. The Catholics who run the largest charitable organizations in the world, have giving selfless hearts to an extreme that allows you Athiests to walk all over us while we sit back and pray for you.
It’s best to explore a more spiritual rout in nature, not a building. Ive stopped attending my church,because I could not get to God, there was too many distractions, the music for example. God never specifically mentions a church, and the Bible was written by man, man created a house of God for his own purposes, but obviously not all men are right for that kind of place. The church is a good thing, but it shouldnt be manditory or obligatory, it corrupts the whole idea of freedom. Religions issue for decline is that it is forced a lot of times.
I am just a little confused I guess…if Peter was the first Pope, why did the Romans behead him or according to some accounts, crucify him upside down? Why crucify your own Pope?
My research has led me to the conclusion that the original Christian Church was in Jerusalem but it was sacked in 70 A.D. by Romans. So we are supposed to believe that these Roman pagans that crucified Jesus and sacked the first Christian Churches in Jerusalem and killed the apostles are the “true Church”? Revelation reveals a story about a Mother Harlot. To this day this Harlot is referred to as the “Mother Church”. You decide.
Art I can see you are burning with hatred and i am praying for you. But dont embarass yourself with that ridiculous line about catholic church (or religion in general) being responsible for causing wars, etc. Just do a search for the top 100 wars in history and you will find it hard to see much related to religion.
Theist or atheist? read leading theist convert Antony Flew’s ‘There is a God’ based on recent scientific discoverys. Catholic or Protestant google EWTN and go to their JH program and hear/read the interviews of the hundreds of interviews with former Protestant Ministers giving their reasons for conversion - authority, first hand study of the early church fathers before the Bible was formed aroung 397AD. In short follow the evidence no matter the personal cost- it leads to Christ’s paradise!!
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