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We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
- How many Catholics are there in the world? Or in the USA? Or your town and state? Think about that for a moment.
- If one looks to the U.S. Census population figures just released for 2010, the answer is there are no Catholics in the USA. But the census population figures also show no Protestants, Jews, Muslims, or Hindus, Buddhists, or Unitarian Universalists. That’s because the Census Bureau is prohibited by law from asking mandatory questions about religious beliefs. The prohibition has not always existed and at various times throughout U.S. history, federal census takers have asked questions about religious belief. The practice was always controversial, as anyone familiar with either the American Constitution or Americans’ general personal constitutions might well imagine.
- In other countries, however, governments do collect official statistics on religious belief and church membership. Again, however, in many countries, such inquiries are also highly controversial.Just how do we know that there are 1.188 billion Catholics around the world? This is the “official” figure given by the Vatican’s Central Statistics Office in the Annuario Pontifico 2010 [Pontifical Yearbook 2010].
- This figure is derived from government statistics where permitted, private research, and of course, the Church’s own census taking, starting at the parish level. There are “independent” Catholic institutions engaged in demographic research such as Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Other authoritative sources are The Official Catholic Directory, published by National Register Publishing Co., the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, and independent researcher David M. Cheney, who runs the website Catholic-Hierarchy.org.
- One source of independent research on religious affiliations is, strangely enough, The CIA World Factbook, published by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. The 2011 edition of the Factbook covers 165 countries and includes statistics about religious affiliations in each country. The CIA data is consistent with other, nongovernmental research on religious institutions and affiliations.The worldwide Catholic population of 1.182 billion persons constitutes more than 17% of the world’s total population, making Catholicism the largest religious denomination in the world.The total U.S. Catholic population is reportedly between 65,400,000 and 77,800,000 persons. The lower figure is the “official” number; the higher 77.8 million number is based on self-identity survey data. In any event, researchers generally regard Catholics as making up about 24% (+/-1%) of the total U.S. Population and about 30% of all American Christians. The next largest religious group in the U.S. Is the Southern Baptist Convention with about 16.6 million members, about one-third the number of Catholics.
The “most” Catholic states in the U.S. are Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Rhode Island, each with about 42% Catholic populations. California, Illinois, and Nebraska follow with 31% each.
The “least” Catholic state is Arkansas with a mere 5% Catholic population.
Of the nearly one-quarter of Americans who are Catholic, only a quarter of them (5%) are African-American. As for Hispanics, CARA recently reported that, “The proportion of Hispanics who are Catholic and Protestant remains unclear, partly because of varying survey methodologies and limited understanding of how that variation affects estimates of Hispanic religious identification.”The CARA paper further states “Estimates of the proportion of Hispanics or Latinos in the United States who identify as Catholic vary considerably, from slightly over half to 90 percent [citing a 2000 Department of Health and Human Services report]. No clear consensus has emerged among scholars, and debate persists among church leaders and activists.
Methodologies and data from eleven different papers are then examined. The CARA researchers finally state “We conclude that 70 percent or slightly more is a reasonable estimate of the proportion of adult Hispanics who are Catholic, and 20 percent a reasonable estimate of the proportion Protestant or other Christian.”
How Many Hispanics are Catholic? A Review of Survey Data and Methodology, (P. Perl, J.Z. Greely, and M. M. Gray, Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, Georgetown University, 2006).
A Catholic Gene Puzzler
1. In which of the following jurisdictions would one most likely encounter a Catholic?
A. Vietnam
B. Great Britain
C. East Timor
D. Arkansas USA
2. Which of the following countries has a Catholic population larger than the total populations of Los Angeles and Chicago combined?
A. Australia
B. India
C. Austria
D. Angola
3. Name four of the five “most” (greatest %) Catholic countries in the world.
4. In the Nicene Creed, Catholics profess to “believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.” As a point of canon law, however, the Catholic Church consists of ______(number) of sui iuris churches in the Catholic communion.”
A. 3
B. 7
C. 18
D. 23
E. 1,548
Put your answers in the comments. Correct answers will be posted Wednesday, October 5, 2011, in the comments.
Catholics By the Numbers
02 Sunday Oct 2011
Posted Miscellaneous
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Craig, I’ll take a shot. I did not use Google or anything else to research, so I may be simply embarrassing myself, but…
1B – Although Great Britain is not know for it’s Catholicism, given the other choices I think it’s most likely.
2C – Austria. Although I think India might be the trick answer – St Thomas did a lot there, and while I didn’t figure out the combined population of the two cities it might represent the small fraction of Indian Catholics.
3-Poland, Italy, Spain, Portugal
4B-only because I can think of more than 3 – assuming I actually understand the question correctly!
I’ll give it a try, too. Like Donna, I did not research the answers, so these are my best guesses. I’m pretty sure I’ll get at least one answer correct, though!
1A – Vietnam. I know some Vietnamese Catholics and the old Lithuanian Catholic Church in my parents home town is now a Vietnamese Catholic Church, so there must be quite a few Vietnamese Catholics. Besides, Vietnam was once a French colony with French Catholic missionaries, wasn’t it?
2B – India. I know some Indian Catholics and with the sheer number of people in India, the total number of Catholics must be substantial.
3 – Poland, Italy, Spain, and Ireland. Having visited Poland, Italy, and Spain, I can attest to the fact that there seems to be a Catholic Church on every corner. As for Ireland, except for Northern Ireland, I thought just about everyone was Catholic.
4D – 23. Do I get extra credit if I name them all?
My best guesses here, and I didn’t read the earlier comments:
1. C
2. B
3. Italy, Spain, The Vatican (does that count?), Mexico (all but the Vatican assuming that we’re talking affiliation, not practice.)
4. C
1. In which of the following jurisdictions would one most likely encounter a Catholic?
A. Vietnam
B. Great Britain
C. East Timor
D. Arkansas USA
The answer is East Timor, a country whose population of 850,000 is 93.2% Catholic. So a visitor has better than 9 of 10 chances of encountering a Catholic. However, there are more Catholics in Vietnam (5.7 million; 6.9% of total population) than there are in Great Britain (4.8 million; 8.5% of total population) or Arkansas (145,000; 5% of total population).
2. Which of the following countries has a Catholic population larger than the total populations of Los Angeles and Chicago combined?
A. Australia
B. India
C. Austria
D. Angola
The population of the City of Angels as of 2010 was 3,792,621. The Windy City had 2,695,598 residents for a combined total of 6,488,219 souls. India has over 17,005,000 Catholics in its total population of 1,100,001,000.
3. Name four of the five “most” (greatest %) Catholic countries in the world.
Italy 96.55%
Malta 95.34%
Poland 94.34%
Equatorial Guinea 93.52%
East Timor 93.20%
(Note: I did not include Saint Pierre and Miquelon, a French dependency in the North Atlantic, whose 6,000 inhabitants are 100% Catholic. I had some concerns about the sovereignty and independence of this two-island area as to whether it really is a “country.” I also did not include Vatican City, which really is a “country.” The United States ranks 75th in the per centage of Catholic population.)
4. In the Nicene Creed, Catholics profess to “believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.” As a point of canon law, however, the Catholic Church consists of ______(number) of “sui iuris churches in the Catholic communion.”
A. 3
B. 7
C. 18
D. 23
E. 1,548
The answer is 23. The Catholic Church consists of 1 Western (or Latin) church and 22 Eastern churches with their own church law (sui iuris). They aare sometimes referred to as “autonomous particular Churches. These are not to be confused with Eastern Orthodox churches which are not part of the Catholic communion. The Eastern Catholic Churches are:
Melkite Church
Ukrainian Catholic Church
Ruthenian Catholic Church
Romanian Catholic Church
Italo-Albanian Catholic Church
Albanian Byzantine Catholic Church
Belarusian Greek Catholic Church
Bulgarian Greek Catholic Church
Croatian Greek Catholic Church
Greek Byzantine Catholic Church
Hungarian Greek Catholic Church
Macedonian Greek Catholic Church
Russian Catholic Church
Slovak Greek Church
Maronite Church
Syriac Catholic Church
Syro-Malankara Catholic Church
Chaldean Church
Syro-Malabar Catholic Church
Armenian Catholic Church
Coptic Catholic Church
Ethiopian Catholic Church
For more information on any of the questions, refer to the sources cited in the post.