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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

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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.

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33 Comments

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Frosty38 | Oct 23, 2012, 07:52 AM EDT

Raise your hand if you attend mass and serve in any capacity. I do every sunday and all the things going on are priest calls a lot of them CAPE CATHOLICS do you know what that means

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eiriamach | Oct 12, 2012, 05:49 PM EDT

Thanks, TomS. I seem to be impervious to criticism from their direction. That immunity feels like a blessing that I did nothing to deserve, but perhaps it serves some purpose besides keeping me happy, so I don't question it, Deo gratias.

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eiriamach | Oct 12, 2012, 03:46 PM EDT

eiriamach, I have just caught up with your posts and am happy to see that you remain at the top of your game. The cretins who attack you have yet to crawl out of the cave and, frankly, not being as generous as you are, I'd prefer to leave them there.

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CindyDoyle | Oct 12, 2012, 10:35 AM EDT

American Catholics are now cafeteria Catholics. We go to church to receive communion-Jesus and honor our Mother Mary. But some of the church laws are foreign to us and are ignored and never preached to us, teaching only love and forgiveness to all. This church is not a cult.

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KweenOHearts | Oct 12, 2012, 04:28 AM EDT

BrianO, maybe not 'fundamentalist protestant,' just fundamentalistgayobsessed, and rather taken with an unduly hight opinion of her own self-generated (because it surely is not biblically based) dogmatic quasi-philosophical verbosity.

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BrianO | Oct 11, 2012, 11:40 PM EDT

Ya I,m the insulting attacker because I have faith in God. America was founded on belief in God. The laws provide for tolerance of all beliefs, but the country was founded on the foundation of God given rights endowed by our creator.

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irishcoffeekid | Oct 11, 2012, 10:58 PM EDT

its probably because more people are praying for a miracle - a smarter government and a better economy!!!

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eiriamach | Oct 11, 2012, 06:11 PM EDT

Niall writes, "America in fact is becoming more Godless." This assessment does not follow from the Pew Research! Niall accurately states the statistics on agnostics and atheists, but overlooks facts about the fast-expanding group of 'unaffiliated.' "Many of the country's 46 million unaffiliated adults are religious or spiritual in some way. Two-thirds of them say they believe in God (68%). More than half say they often feel a deep connection with nature and the earth (58%), while more than a third classify themselves as 'spiritual' but not 'religious' (37%), and one in five say they pray every day (21%)" (Pew Forum). Most of them appreciate the work of religious institutions in "strengthening community bonds and aiding the poor." These stats support Niall's belief that many are "sick of the political interventions that religious groups continue to make." They see no 'home' in the churches for their spiritual values.

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eiriamach | Oct 11, 2012, 05:46 PM EDT

I'm happy to read that Hispanics are becoming the dominant group in US Catholicism. Latino/Latina Americans have a hospitable, vibrant culture that values freedom and respects people with divergent views. (Perhaps there's hope for ecumenism in an Hispanic RCC.) Strange to say, that description used to apply to Irish culture also, back when our ancestors brought it to America!

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cillowen | Oct 11, 2012, 03:38 PM EDT

the reject wins out - who knew?

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eiriamach | Oct 11, 2012, 03:30 PM EDT

KatieMurphy, good luck trying to call BrianO or WoundedKnee to account! When they throw around insults, slurs, and wild distortions, they let us know that they are incapable of replying, point-on-point, to the views they reject. Now why would anyone think that such behavior would attract thinking people to their brand of Catholicism? Anyone who reads anything I write on ICentral will see that I could never be "fundamentalist." And we all know that American media do not practice "communist Marxism." Ridiculous, laughable! What's clear to me from reading this article and the comments here is this: Whether or not Catholicism is now the dominant American religion, 'Irish' is no longer predominantly 'Catholic' in America.

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Gearoid4 | Oct 11, 2012, 03:24 PM EDT

The Church has remained steady in terms of numbers and influence, despite the predictable clamour to change her teachings and doctrines. In fact, the Church is growing exponentially in continents like African and Asia, and is shrinking in the tired, and declining Western nations, where the ideologies of subjective liberalism and material rationalism has eroded the Christian moral base.

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KatieMurphy | Oct 11, 2012, 01:36 PM EDT

Brian O talks about socialists / communists and easier to control.... The ctgholic church in the past ran Europe during the dark ages of zero social and economic progress..............BTW socialist and communist were the battle crys of the Kluxers in the early part of the 20th century..........Good Going BRian O. sorry but slavery got outlawed long ago...........America btw was the 2nd to last nation in the west to end slavery and the only one to need a war to do it. America is also the most relgious nation in the western world. The sooner the better official religion is dead, the better...........All we need to do is follow that Jewish RAbbi of long ago who told us to "love thy neighbor as thyself" All the rest of pomp and circumstance at best, and a history of horrors in the name of God at worst.

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KatieMurphy | Oct 11, 2012, 01:29 PM EDT

E the comments about the evangelical Lutherans and the Episcopals........I dont know how the evan Luths got that name - they are anything but the evangelicals in America and many other places - theworst of the worst of haters of black people and gay people.............The Evangelical lutherans allow gay ministers in relationship, and the Episcopals now have a marriage ceremony for our gay citizans. the Evan Luths are working on such a ceremony also.

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KatieMurphy | Oct 11, 2012, 01:02 PM EDT

Be real caredfula aon this poll. The pope hired someone from FAux news to spin his messages. One never knows. BTW in France EWTN last year said that only 13% od rw pwoplw there and 15% in Spain go to church on any regular basis.....Since thats cath TV I checked - there are several websites where its reported that the real number in France is like 5% active catholic. And the people in france, fully aware of what the sex starved priests have done world wide - they elected HOllande and a super-majority to parliment........... Guaranteeing that civil marriage equality under law for gay poeple is going to happen as promised - by the end of the year.........AS for the protestandts - one fo the biggest groups is the evangelicals. Its really a new name for the so. Baptists - the pople who justified slavery and segregation as per the bible...........the same people who captured the repub party some decades ago, and are even more vociferous since their nightmare came true- an african american in the white house....AS president Johnson said when he signed the civil right bill about 1964, "I've given the south to the repub party for a 1000 years. (Johnson knew what poverty meant - he grew up dirt poor in TX - thats in a book about him .

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