Nineteen Sixty-four is a research blog for the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University edited by Mark M. Gray. CARA is a non-profit research center that conducts social scientific studies about the Catholic Church. Founded in 1964, CARA has three major dimensions to its mission: to increase the Catholic Church's self understanding; to serve the applied research needs of Church decision-makers; and to advance scholarly research on religion, particularly Catholicism. Follow CARA on Twitter at: caracatholic.

2.26.2014

Best When Mixed: Polling and Demography


A recent infographic has stirred up a new discussion about who is “leaving” the Catholic Church in the United States and where are they going. The graphic shows declining numbers of white Christians across generations while showing an increase in young adults without a religious affiliation or “Nones.” Mark Silk, Professor of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College, writing for Religion News Service, noted in a response to the graphic:

White Christians turning into Nones. That’s pretty much the message of this week’s graphic from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). The news is that white evangelicals, mainliners, and Catholics go from 69 percent of those 65 and older to 25 percent of those 18 to 29. And the “unaffiliated” — i.e. those who say they have no religion — go from 11 percent of the over-65′s to 31 percent of the 18-29′s.

Professor Silk was certainly not alone in drawing this conclusion and I am not alone in noticing the graphic's potential for creating distortions. PRRI’s graphic simply highlights growing diversity of the U.S. population (i.e., "America the Diverse"). PRRI does polling on religion and politics and a common practice in that endeavor is to break out religious groups by race and ethnicity as there are often distinct political differences between people of the same religion who have different racial and ethnic identities. What the figure lacks is a break out of race and ethnicity for the “Nones” (...which is also understandable given that this sub-group tends to have very similar political attitudes regardless of race and ethnicity).

Are Nones disproportionately white (i.e., the children of Catholics and Protestants)? Not quite. Generational differences in a snapshot poll may not always really reveal a trend one seems to “see” in the data. First of all, a smaller proportion of people self-identify as non-Hispanic white among younger generations, as shown in the General Social Survey (GSS) data below. Much of the population growth in the U.S. in recent years has come among those self-identifying as Hispanic or Latino. This has primarily occurred through immigration and historically higher fertility rates.


Despite a decline in percentages across generations, the U.S. non-Hispanic white population is growing in absolute numbers, just at a slower rate than the Hispanic population. With smaller proportions self-identifying as non-Hispanic white there will most definitely be smaller proportions self-identifying as “white Catholics,” “white Protestants,” etc. in younger generations. This has little to do with shifting religious identities and is not “White Christians turning into Nones” (...which reminds me of another instance when some commentators and reporters misunderstood percentages/graphics and concluded that Christians were "migrating from Europe to Africa, Asia and the Americas").

As the population becomes more racially and ethnically diverse, Nones are actually becoming less likely to self-identify as non-Hispanic white as well (82% in 2002 and 69% in 2012). Currently, one in four Nones self-identifies as either African American of Hispanic/Latino.


The GSS also indicates that Americans who self-identify as Non-Hispanic white aren’t becoming less Catholic across generations either, as shown in the figure below. Between one in four and one in five non-Hispanic white Americans of each age segment self-identify as Catholic (similar proportions, given margin of error). Differences by age group among non-Hispanic white Protestants are more evident...


Even though Non-Hispanic white Catholics make up a smaller proportion of all 18 to 29-year-olds than they do among all of those ages 65 and older in the 2012 GSS (14.9% compared to 15.3%) it is also important to point out there are actually more of these young Catholics in absolute numbers than the older Catholics. Using the GSS data and Census estimates there were approximately 7.3 million non-Hispanic white Catholics ages 18 to 29 in 2012 compared to 6.0 million non-Hispanic white Catholics ages 65 and older. Such is the nature of demography. People die (i.e., "exit the sample") and they tend to be older. The size of the pie (or bars in PRRI's graphic) for those ages 65 and older is simply smaller than the pie for those ages 18 to 29. 

"Conventional wisdom," many religion reporters, and even some researchers repeatedly claim that the Catholic Church is “hemorrhaging” members and we just can't see it because of immigration. In response, we’ve repeatedly pointed out that this hypothetical equation simply does not balance with immigration alone and that there has to be more to that story that goes ignored (1, 2, 3). Yet few ever seem interested in running the population numbers. What percentage of the adult Catholic population in the U.S. is foreign-born? (Pew: 22%, GSS: 26%). What percentage of former adult Catholics in the U.S., those who have left the faith, are foreign-born? (Pew: 18%, GSS 17%). Plug in these numbers (and more) and see how everything adds up. Make comparisons over time and see how different things are now from decades ago. Sometimes it takes a bit of demography and polling to see the clearest portrait of reality. Right on time to test this point again is Gallup’s annual aggregated estimates of religious affiliation in the United States.


How many years of the Church “falling apart” will it take for the Catholic affiliation percentage to decline (beyond margin of error)?... Reality can be so stubborn!

Update 2/27: One final graph below shows the U.S. adult population by religious affiliation and age group...


Mixing image provided by RLHyde.

2.03.2014

Ordination All-Stars

The research note is from the Winter edition of The CARA Report. CARA has been releasing research in this quarterly print format for nearly 20 years, since 1995, and has won a number of awards for "general excellence" from the Catholic Press Association during this time. You can get your copy here

Following the procedure originally devised by the late Fr. John Klein of the Archdiocese of Chicago, and using data from The Official Catholic Directory, from time to time CARA has reviewed the proportion of ordinations to the diocesan priesthood relative to the latest Catholic population figures for each diocese. Only Latin-rite dioceses that have had at least five ordinations during the reporting period are included.

The tables here present the results of the latest review, for the three ordination years 2010–12 and using year-end Catholic population figures for 2012. The first table lists the top 20 dioceses according to the priest-to-parishioner ratio; the second the top 21 dioceses (because of a tie) based on the largest absolute number of new priests ordained.





CARA has presented the results of the five top-20 comparisons for ordination years 1993-1995, 1997-1999, 2000-2002, 2003-2006, 2007-2009, and now 2010-2012. An analysis of the results of all six data points indicates that of the 57 dioceses that placed in the top-20 for Catholics per ordinand ratio at least once:

  • Only the Diocese of Lincoln was in the top-20 all six times
  • Three dioceses were listed five times: Bismarck, Fargo, and Wichita
  • Three more were on the list four times: Peoria, Sioux Falls, and Tyler
  • And 13 were listed three times: Alexandria, Atlanta, Birmingham, Duluth, Knoxville, Mobile, Omaha, Owensboro, Pensacola-Tallahassee, Savannah, Springfield-Cape Girardeau, Tulsa, and Yakima

At the other extreme, for the years 2010-2012, six dioceses with a total of almost 500,000 Catholics had no ordinations, and another 16 dioceses with almost 1,700,000 Catholics had only one new priest.

12.02.2013

Mexican Ancestry More Common Than Any Other Among U.S. Catholics Under 65


In a September CARA Catholic Poll (CCP) we asked a national random sample of working-age self-identified Catholics (ages 16 to 64) "What is your ancestry or ethnic origin?" as an open-ended question (i.e., Census method). We identified more than 80 specific code-able ancestries from the 1,365 respondents (margin of sampling error ±2.7 percentage points). The most common response was Mexican (19.0%) followed by Irish (16.6%), German (15.7%), Italian (12.5%), and Polish (7.6%). The figure below compares this Catholic sample to the overall U.S. population.


In 2010, we posted a time-series analysis of ancestry for U.S. Catholics using the General Social Survey (GSS) entitled "On What Wave Did Your Ancestors Ride?" In the larger, more recent, and younger sample noted above, Mexican ancestry is now clearly even more common among U.S. adult Catholics under 65. This is not unexpected given recent immigration patterns and greater racial and ethnic diversity among Catholic Millennials (born 1982 or later). By comparison, in the 1970s, 18% of U.S. adult Catholics self-identified their ancestry as Italian (...now ranking 4th, with more Italian-Americans no longer self-identifing as Catholic) followed by 16% Irish, 13% German, 9% Polish, and 7% Mexican.

Overall, 26% of all respondents indicated ancestry with one or more Latin American countries. Yet, some 37% of respondents self-identifies their race or ethnicity as Hispanic or Latino. About one in four Hispanic or Latino Catholics did not indicate ancestry to any specific Latin American country (27%). Fifty-two percent of Hispanic or Latino Catholics say they are of Mexican ancestry.

More than a quarter of non-Hispanic white Catholics surveyed say they are of Irish ancestry (27%). Three percent of black or African American Catholics indicate Irish ancestry as do 2% of Hispanic or Latino Catholics. Yet, as shown in the figure below, self-identification with a European ancestry is more broadly falling across Catholic generations. Feeling a personal connection to waves of Catholic immigration from Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries appears to be fading a bit into the history books (...note this is most likely occurring through generational replacement rather than anyone changing their ancestral self-identities).


On average, respondents identified with 1.2 ancestry groups. This does not vary across generations. Thus, younger Catholics are not losing a sense of ancestry or ethnic origin in general. Across all generations, fewer than one in five don't have any ancestral identities. Majorities note just one ancestry group. More than a quarter of Millennials (26%) note two or more ancestry groups.


In other recent research, CARA has identified 946 Catholic parishes in the United States (5.4%) who indicate that they currently serve a specific European-origin community including 248 Polish parishes, 236 German parishes, 199 Italian parishes, and 108 Irish parishes. By comparison there are 4,544 parishes (26.1%) who indicate that they serve Hispanic, Latino, and/or Spanish speaking communities. For more information about this topic and other related data see our recently released study, "Cultural Diversity in the Catholic Church in the United States."

Ship mast image above courtesy of eschipul.

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