NEW YORK BOSTON |#Popular: Irish Celebrity Gossip Irish in US Politics Irish Festivals Irish Roots Irish Entertainment Offbeat Irish

Home Page > Blogs > News blogs > Periscope > Catholicism fast becoming the dominant US religion new poll shows -- As Protestant numbers decline, Catholics now come center stage

Periscope by Niall O'Dowd

Catholicism fast becoming the dominant US religion new poll shows -- As Protestant numbers decline, Catholics now come center stage

Posted on Thursday, October 11, 2012 at 08:15 AM

Larger Text

E-mail

33 Comments

RSS

Archives

Catholicism is now the biggest faith group in the United States

Catholics are now the single biggest faith group in America at 22 per cent, according to the latest Pew research poll.

The news will come as a positive boost to the American bishops who have endured massive negative publicity on child abuse cases these past few years.

The influx of Hispanics has certainly helped the Catholic numbers but the church seems in remarkable shape given its problems.

The emerging Catholic power is shown most clearly in the make-up of the Supreme Court where six of the nine justices share that faith.

Compared to Ireland where the drop-off in Catholic identification has been catastrophic, the American church has been far more solid.

But it surely points to the importance of issues such as immigration reform for the Catholic church to help increase its members.

It also shows that the old Irish dominance of the church in the U.S. will soon be a thing of the past. Cardinal Timothy Dolan in New York will likely be the last Irish prelate and end an unbroken line going back well over a century as Hispanics come to dominate.

The same poll showed that the various Protestant religions have dropped from 66 per cent of all religions forty years ago to under 40 percent.

Surprisingly, the fall-off is across the board from liberal churches to born-again southern churches.
It is an amazing drop-off especially given the media sense that the evangelicals are going from strength to strength especially in the political sphere.

America in fact is becoming more Godless, with twenty per cent saying they have no organized religion. One in five are either atheist, agnostic or of no organized religion.

I have to believe that much of that number is composed of people sick of the political interventions that religious groups continue to make.

I have always had the sense that most Americans I know consider their religion a private matter, not one to pump up in the public square.

Then again, perhaps the drift away is just an inevitable reaction to modern day life where community and church bonds have been weakened.

Either way, the Pew poll makes for extraordinary reading.

All changed it seems.

E-mail

33 comments

Previous Page 3 of 3 pages

ForTheRepublic! | Oct 11, 2012, 09:49 AM EDT

As an outsider looking in I was under the impression the Evangelicals were on the rise so this is an interesting read!

Report abuse

johhnyb | Oct 11, 2012, 09:17 AM EDT

I wonder if 6 of the SC were protestant would you be saying it was great or would you be yelling 'discrimination'. I'd love to know.

Report abuse

johhnyb | Oct 11, 2012, 08:29 AM EDT

Niall, an interesting story. What a paradox, America becoming more Catholic and more godless at the same time. Here's another paradox. We live in a country where we have benefitted enormously because of our faith and commitment to science and technology, yet, more than 40% of us believe that the earth is approx. 6,000 years old. By simple deduction, this must mean that about 60% of Republicans believe this - and these are the folks who control our congress. The latest from Georgia where Republican rep. Paul Broun, who fancies himself a scientist, and sits on the House Committee on Space, Science & Technology (along with Todd Aken of "legitimate rape" fame)announced that Einstein's General Relativity comes from "the pit of Hell" and that the earth was created over a six day period some 9,000 years ago. These are the lunatics who govern us!

Report abuse

Previous Page 3 of 3 pages