Catholic population in New England declines, 1990-2008
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  Catholic population in New England declines, 1990-2008
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Author Topic: Catholic population in New England declines, 1990-2008  (Read 2430 times)
Brittain33
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« on: March 09, 2009, 07:44:20 AM »

The Catholic population in Massachusetts has fallen from a majority of 54 percent in 1990 to only 39 percent today. The drop is mirrored across New England.

The data show that this has resulted from Catholics disaffiliating with the church, at least in their heads, and not the growth of other religions or denominations.

We've seen the effects of this in Massachusetts state government.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/03/09/number_of_ne_catholics_tumbles/

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12th Doctor
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« Reply #1 on: March 09, 2009, 02:24:51 PM »
« Edited: March 09, 2009, 02:27:00 PM by Supersoulty »

Cue BRTD
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Holmes
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« Reply #2 on: March 09, 2009, 02:31:22 PM »

The ironic thing is that if I were to move there because of this, I'd just be helping that Catholic percentage. Hur.
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12th Doctor
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« Reply #3 on: March 09, 2009, 07:11:05 PM »

Having now read this report in three different publications today, I am curious as to why you failed to mention that the survey found a general decline in almost all religious affiliation.
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Verily
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« Reply #4 on: March 09, 2009, 07:34:59 PM »
« Edited: March 09, 2009, 07:36:34 PM by Verily »

Having now read this report in three different publications today, I am curious as to why you failed to mention that the survey found a general decline in almost all religious affiliation.

His source is the Boston Globe, which focused on the trend in New England. It is also the most drastic trend in the data that I can find, although it is certainly the case that Catholicism declined everywhere except the Mexican border states and most other forms of Christianity declined everywhere.
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Aizen
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« Reply #5 on: March 09, 2009, 07:43:44 PM »

Excellent, society is becoming more secular. In ancient times humans practiced polytheism. Eventually this would turn into monotheism. Naturally, the next step would be the removal of "god" altogether
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Holmes
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« Reply #6 on: March 09, 2009, 07:53:08 PM »

What made me sad was the the Catholic percentage in Louisiana went down while the "other Christian" percentage went up. I did a report on Cajuns last semester and I know that they used to hate Protestants for whole deportation thing(probably not a big hate anymore though), and now that they seem to be joining them is just sad. Sad
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Rob
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« Reply #7 on: March 09, 2009, 09:13:06 PM »

The data show that this has resulted from Catholics disaffiliating with the church, at least in their heads, and not the growth of other religions or denominations.

It looks like New England Catholics are following the "self-secularization" trend of many northern mainline Protestants. Smiley

In twenty years, every New England state will have medical marijuana, assisted-suicide rights, and gay marriage.
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Verily
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« Reply #8 on: March 09, 2009, 11:43:18 PM »

The data show that this has resulted from Catholics disaffiliating with the church, at least in their heads, and not the growth of other religions or denominations.

It looks like New England Catholics are following the "self-secularization" trend of many northern mainline Protestants. Smiley

It's particularly interesting because Catholics-by-birth have elsewhere exhibited surprising resistance to being labeled nonreligious.

For example, while religious surveys in most of Canada find at least 20% claiming no religion, in Quebec around 90% of the population claims to be Catholic (with additional small percents of Protestants, Hindus, Muslims, etc., making nonreligious a very small group indeed). This despite the fact that Quebec is undeniably the most secular province in Canada; only BC would try to dispute that, and even BCers would admit that interior BC is quite religious. Similar trends have been observed in Britain and in other European countries with substantial Catholic and Protestant populations.

But here we have an example of Catholics-by-birth relinquishing the label as readily as Protestants. I suspect it's related to the extreme polarization of religion in the United States; moderate-to-liberal Catholics-by-birth feel isolated from religious experience in the United States by the extremely conservative nature of public religion and have therefore ceased, in many cases, identifying as religious at all. I'm sure controversies around sexual abuse by the clergy haven't helped matters, either.
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Brittain33
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« Reply #9 on: March 10, 2009, 07:21:12 AM »
« Edited: March 10, 2009, 07:22:49 AM by brittain33 »

Having now read this report in three different publications today, I am curious as to why you failed to mention that the survey found a general decline in almost all religious affiliation.

His source is the Boston Globe, which focused on the trend in New England. It is also the most drastic trend in the data that I can find, although it is certainly the case that Catholicism declined everywhere except the Mexican border states and most other forms of Christianity declined everywhere.

Yes, this is the only reason. I read the article in the Globe and posted it here, more or less with the headline it had there. I didn't talk about other trends because I hadn't read about them and was unaware there were other newsworthy results from the same study.

Boston is particularly susceptible to the "Fog in Channel; Continent Cut Off" school of journalism. Smiley
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Filuwaúrdjan
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« Reply #10 on: March 10, 2009, 09:54:48 AM »

Similar trends have been observed in Britain and in other European countries with substantial Catholic and Protestant populations.

There's a link to religious minorities in general; in England most of the highest rates of Christians in the last census were in areas with big Catholic populations, with a strong Nonconformist tradition or both (hello Wigan!). Another interesting thing is that if you look at the data at a lower level, people are apparently more likely to identify themselves as Christians if they live in or near an area with a big population of people from a non-Christian religion. Another interesting trend; traditional, "stable" working class areas and the better-built (originally) estates ended (almost everywhere) to have lower rates of people claiming No Religion than system-built estates built, initially, with relatively few amenities.
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Filuwaúrdjan
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« Reply #11 on: March 10, 2009, 09:59:29 AM »

Actually, the bit about non-Christian minorities also applies (in a weird way) in the Protestant (working class) parts of Liverpool (though replace "non-Christian religion" with "Catholics").
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Sensei
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« Reply #12 on: March 10, 2009, 10:17:07 AM »

good
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ottermax
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« Reply #13 on: March 11, 2009, 01:22:36 AM »

The data show that this has resulted from Catholics disaffiliating with the church, at least in their heads, and not the growth of other religions or denominations.

It looks like New England Catholics are following the "self-secularization" trend of many northern mainline Protestants. Smiley

It's particularly interesting because Catholics-by-birth have elsewhere exhibited surprising resistance to being labeled nonreligious.

For example, while religious surveys in most of Canada find at least 20% claiming no religion, in Quebec around 90% of the population claims to be Catholic (with additional small percents of Protestants, Hindus, Muslims, etc., making nonreligious a very small group indeed). This despite the fact that Quebec is undeniably the most secular province in Canada; only BC would try to dispute that, and even BCers would admit that interior BC is quite religious. Similar trends have been observed in Britain and in other European countries with substantial Catholic and Protestant populations.

But here we have an example of Catholics-by-birth relinquishing the label as readily as Protestants. I suspect it's related to the extreme polarization of religion in the United States; moderate-to-liberal Catholics-by-birth feel isolated from religious experience in the United States by the extremely conservative nature of public religion and have therefore ceased, in many cases, identifying as religious at all. I'm sure controversies around sexual abuse by the clergy haven't helped matters, either.

While you are correct about Catholics separating from their religious label, it is not as if people are dropping it that crazily. Still 75% of Americans claim Christianity and 85% a religion, but it is questionable as to how many of these people are actually religious. I know many Christians who always claim Christianity, but are not religious at all.
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