A while back we learned through the Pew Research Center that about 30% of practicing Catholic believe the Church’s teaching about transsubstantiation.
Pew now tells us more about Catholic in these USA and in Italy. Sandro Magister writes about it. HERE
Churches Ever Emptier. Two Shocking Surveys in the United States and Italy
In Japan, where Pope Francis will land tomorrow, those baptized into the Catholic Church are just 0.4 percent of the population. Without any sign of numerical growth.
But also in two Western countries with a solid Catholic presence the statistics are heading decisively lower. These two countries are the United States and Italy.
IN THE UNITED STATES
In the United States there is a noteworthy survey by the Washington-based Pew Research Center, to which on November 13 “L’Osservatore Romano” also dedicated an article:
> In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace
On the whole, Christians of all confessions have dropped from 78 percent of the population in 2007 to 65 percent in 2019, while during the same years those who identify themselves as atheist, agnostic, or without religion – the “nones” – have increased from 16 percent to 26 percent.
Separating the Christians into Protestants and Catholics, the former have dropped over the past twelve years from 51 to 43 percent, and the Catholics from 24 to 20 percent.
Christians who said they had gone to church for Mass or another ceremony at least once a month fell from 54 percent to 45 percent. While those who said they had done so a few times a year or never, apart from marriages or funerals, grew from 45 to 54 percent.
This drop in religious practice almost across the board involves both men and women, whether white or black or Hispanic, college graduates and the less educated. What marks a strong difference are above all age and political proclivity. The “millennials,” meaning those born in the 1980s and early 90s, together with those who vote for the Democratic Party are the Americans who show the strongest drop in religious practice and the most decisive growth of the “nones.”
Among the “millennials” today Christians are 49 percent and the “nones” 40 percent. Those who go to church at least once a month are 35 percent and never or almost never 42 percent.
Among American citizens of Hispanic origin, ten years ago Catholics were the majority, 57 percent. Today they are less than half, 47 percent, with the “nones” rising in the meantime to 23 percent.
The area in which the drop in Catholics is most pronounced is the Northeast, where over the past ten years they have fallen from 36 to 27 percent of the population. Almost unchanging, instead, is their slight presence in the South, where they were 17 percent ten years ago and are 16 percent today. In the South, however, there has been a more marked drop among the Protestants, who have fallen in ten years from 64 to 53 percent of the population.
Among the Protestants, the only index on the rise is that of the “born again” and “Evangelicals,” who went from 56 to 59 percent of the total over the last ten years.
While among Democratic Party voters the most glaring change is the growth of the “nones,” who jumped over the past ten years from 20 to 34 percent.
[…]
You can read all the great post-conciliar springtime news about Italy over there.
The reaction of some people will be to push to adapt the Church and her teachings to a changing world.
There are a lot of reasons why the Church is in decline. Worldly adaptation, however, is one of the reasons why we see what we see today. We fell into the trap that Paul warns of and conformed to the wisdom of “this world”. Alas, we were guided into this trap by our leaders, some of them knowingly, for theirs is a project of conversion of the Church into an NGO.
My proposal remains the same. Recovery of our tradition. No project of renewal we undertake in the Church will have any effect if it is not flowing from and back to revitalized sacred liturgical worship. We must give God what is due, by the virtue of Religion. The first way we do that is through worship. Recovery of our traditional forms of worship will guide other efforts. Together with our sound sacred worship, we must graft works of mercy. Over all, we must envelop our offerings to God and neighbor with evidence of joy at our Catholic identity in deed and word even while also performing many acts of reparation. In short, a Catholicism that integrates what our forebears bequeathed with our whole day, everywhere.
Also, and I’ve written this before, I think we will see the slow convergence of traditional Catholics with the more charismatic sort. That will be a rocky process, but many good things will come of it, for both elements.
The Vatican changed its stance toward the Church’s presence in China. What fruits have come from this change?
We’ve all had the experience at some time of spending time in poorly fitting clothing, perhaps with little opportunity to move about for relief. We just have to bear it.
A while back we learned through the Pew Research Center that about 30% of practicing Catholic believe the Church’s teaching about transsubstantiation.
