UNITED STATES
MSN
Cathy Lynn Grossman, Religion News Service
A photographer shooting the landscape of American Catholicism today needs a wide-angle lens.
The image would have to stretch to include a Hispanic family at a booming Phoenix church, a disaffected millennial in Seattle who just barely calls herself Catholic, a Mass-every-Sunday senior in Boston and a convert, such as Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush.
Of course, Pope Francis can’t see this entire panorama on a six-day visit, but they can see him. And maybe there will be a “Francis effect” that prompts new levels of pride and engagement in the church.
Studies show that attendance at Mass has been flat for decades. Catholic identity continues to decline among non-Hispanic whites. Meanwhile, immigrant families — Hispanic, Asian and African — keep the overall Roman Catholic population high.
How high, though, depends on how you count.
The Official Catholic Directory counts 68.1 million U.S. Roman Catholics, based on parish reports drawn from the nation’s 195 dioceses. Those reports add up attendance at Mass and participation in the sacraments.
But public surveys that ask adults to name their religious identity find millions more Catholics — including those who have no parish connections.
When the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), a Catholic research agency, aggregated surveys from several major research bodies, it came up with 81.6 million Catholics.
Whom those numbers represent changes every day.
The entire U.S. religious marketplace is in constant churn, with people leaving their childhood faith for other religions or none at all. Nearly 1 in 4 adults are now “nones” — people who claim no denominational identity.
A new Pew Research survey of U.S. Catholics, released Sept. 2, found that 20% of Americans call themselves Catholic by religion today. That’s a statistically significant drop from nearly one in four (23.9%) in Pew’s original 2007 Religious Landscape Survey.
The Pew Research survey also found that 13% of all Americans call themselves former Catholics — people reared in the church who no longer claim the label. Although the Catholic Church outperforms every major U.S. Protestant denomination in keeping believers within the fold, Pew still calculates that six Catholics leave the church for every one person who chooses to join.
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