Reply #54: No. Did you miss my other questions? [View All]

[onager]

I'm still waiting for an explanation of the Incredible Shrinking Dioceses. And the numbers of American Catholic churches closing. And the "critical" shortage of nuns and priests.

The actual numbers are probably closer to David Carlin's figures in his book The Decline and Fall of Roman Catholicism in America. Carlin estimated the real number of American Catholics at about 20 to 25 million.

And people are not exactly lining up to serve the corporation, according to those agnostics and troublemakers over at the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Though the Conference touts the "60 million American Catholics" number and does a lot of cheerleading about "growing numbers of members," it also has a report online entitled The Study of the Impact of Fewer Priests on the Pastoral Ministry:

http://www.usccb.org/plm/summary.htm

The ratio of priests to people in 1900 was approximately 1 in 900. In 1950 the ratio was approximately 1:650. In 1999 the ratio was approximately 1:1200...

There are 433 priests over the age of 90 and 298 priests under the age of 30...

In terms of ethnic diversity today's priests are overwhelmingly Caucasian. One percent of all priests are African American; 3 percent of all priests are Hispanic/Latino; 2 percent of all priests are Asian/Pacific Islanders. All of these reflect increases over the past 5 years.

With 1.1 billion members all over the world, you'd think they could find at least a few more non-Caucasians, too.

Maybe it's one of those miracle things that us atheists always have trouble following.