Leonardo"s Notebook by Mattheus Mei

I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.

Sunday, March 30, 2008

The face of American Catholicism

Dogwood Dell has a post up about an article in the US News & World Report on the upcoming Papal Visit and the Catholicism the Pontiff will encounter. He credits a quote of James Joyce saying "Catholic means here comes everybody"

That statement couldn't be any more true if I say so myself. This, of course, after reading an article on the make up American Catholicism as put out by the Pew Forum. It's broken down into three parts.

Part the First: Demographic Potrait

Part the Second: Religious Characteristics

Part the Third: Social and Political Views

What an interesting slice of Americana, one that I'm proud to be part! Here's one of the more interesting poll breakdowns - Social issues...

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1 comment:

Fr. Gaurav Shroff said...

And notice the difference in views among those who attend weekly and not (Why that distinction was applied only to whites I don't know)

What these stats (not new for sure) show is obviously up for interpretation -- besides there are many other ways of dicing the numbers (by age, for instance). One way of looking at it is that a large number of American Catholics don't attend Mass weekly, and on many social indices, seem to be no different from the rest of secular America, and so it might not be inaccurate to describe these as being "secular Catholics."

Not something to celebrate, IMO.