Global Catholicism

This post includes the first section of a CARA report that presents a global overview of trends in the Catholic Church (download the full report with regional analyses including trends for the workforce of the Church, sacraments, education, lay ministries, and welfare institutions). Although the world is rapidly evolving in a digital age, it is still the case that Catholicism, more often than not, takes place in brick and mortar. The sacramental focus of Catholicism—especially the regular reception of the Eucharist—means that much of the faith “happens” among Catholics in parishes with priests. One cannot go to confession online or be married at the beach. Arguably, the three most important indicators of “vitality” for the Catholic Church are the number of Catholics, the number of parishes, and the number of priests.

Catholic Population
Overall, the global Catholic population has grown by 57 percent since 1980. However, this growth differs by region, with Europe’s Catholic population growing by just 6 percent while the number of Catholics in Africa grew by 238 percent. Differences between these two regions are largely attributable to differences in fertility rates over time.

In 1980, the European total fertility rate (TFR or average births per woman over her lifetime) was 2.16. This is just above the replacement rate of 2.1 where two parents re replacing themselves in the population accounting for infant and maternal mortality.  By 2012, the European TFR had dropped well below replacement rates to 1.72. In many countries, such as Germany and Italy, the number of deaths in a given year are greater than the number of births. Many European countries only grow their populations through immigration—often from non-Catholic countries.

 

By comparison, in Sub-Saharan Africa the TFR in 1980 was 6.76. Here too, as nearly everywhere else in recent decades, fertility rates have declined. The most recent estimate in 2012 for Sub-Saharan Africa was a TFR of 5.15—still well above replacement. Thus, strong growth in the number of Catholics in Africa relative to in Europe is more a phenomenon of differential fertility than immigration or evangelization.

Latin America and the Caribbean have historically also had higher levels of fertility than Europe and North America, leading to strong growth in the number of Catholics in this region. In 1980 the TFR for Latin America and the Caribbean was 4.2. By 2012, this had declined to 2.18—where Europe was in 1980. Population growth in Latin America and the Caribbean will also soon stall as its TFR will likely fall below the replacement rate in the coming decades.

Over the last 50 years the proportion of the global population who are Catholic has remained remarkably steady at about 17.5 percent. Most demographers anticipate a global population exceeding 10 billion by 2100, up from 7.3 billion now. The “engine” of population growth is no longer increasing numbers of children—it is extending life expectancies. The U.S. Census Bureau expects the global senior population (ages 65 and older) to increase from about 617,097,000 now to 1,565,844,000 in 2050. That is growth of 154 percent in just 35 years. The annual number of births worldwide is actually expected to decline during this period by 2 percent, numbering just over 130,000,000 each year. In 2000, the world reached an important milestone: “peak childhood.” From then to now and into the future we can expect there to be about 1.9 billion children (under age 15) around the world at any time.

Some demographers do not expect that the global population will ever reach 10 billion. As Joseph Chamie, former director of the United Nations Population Division, has indicated, “The demographic patterns observed throughout Europe, East Asia and numerous other places during the past half century as well as the continuing decline in birth rates in other nations strongly points to one conclusion: The downward global trend in fertility may likely converge to below-replacement levels during this century. The implications of such a change in the assumptions regarding future fertility, affecting as it will consumption of food and energy, would be far reaching for climate change, biodiversity, the environment, water supplies and international migration. Most notably, the world population could peak sooner and begin declining well below the 10 billion currently projected for the close of the 21st century.”

If current trends continue, we can expect the global Catholic population to increase by about 372 million from 2015 to 2050. This would represent 29 percent growth during this period and result in the 2050 Catholic population numbering 1.64 billion.

Parishes
Since 1980, the Church has had a net gain of more than 15,200 parishes representing 7 percent growth. However, with the population growing by 57 percent during this period there has been a lag in constructing the brick and mortar of the Church. In 1980 there were 3,759 Catholics per parish in the world. This figure now stands at 5,541 Catholics per parish.

Underlying the aggregate numbers, there are significant changes within regions. In Asia and Africa, where the fastest growth in the Catholic population has occurred, the number of parishes had doubled since 1980. In the Americas, the number of parishes has increased by 25 percent and in Oceania they have ticked up by 5 percent. In Europe, the number of parishes has declined by 12 percent with a net loss of 16,669 parishes since 1980.

The Church is currently undergoing a dramatic realignment due largely to these differential growth patterns. The parishes that served the Church for hundreds and hundreds of years are no longer closely aligned with the world’s Catholic population and certainly not its most frequently Mass attending populations. However, there is no giant crane that can pick up a parish from Europe and relocate it to Africa. The process of realignment is slow given the autonomy of the Church’s diocesan and parish structures. Bishops and pastors do not always have the most current information globally on the changes in their population. Nor does closing parishes in one diocese present a “savings” to another diocese so that a new parish can be built. The Church does not function like a multinational corporation.

To maintain the current ratio for Catholics per parish in 2050, the Church will need to increase its total number of global parishes by about 75,000 to approximately 300,000.

Priests
One of the limitations on the construction of a new parish is the availability of priests to pastor these new communities. Globally, the Church had only 713 more priests, diocesan and religious combined, in 2012 than it did in 1980. The most serious decline was in Europe, which had a net loss of 56,830 priests during this period, representing a 23 percent decline in this population (Note: a previous version of the study incorrectly tallied the number of priests in Europe in 2012 at 165,229 when this was actually 186,489 as noted correctly below).

Where the Catholic population is growing, so are the numbers of priests. The number of priests more than doubled in Africa (adding 22,787 priest for a 131 percent increase) and Asia (adding 32,906 priests for a 121 percent increase) between 1980 and 2012.  A growing phenomenon within the Church is the use of African and Asian priests in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere where there are too few native priests to staff parishes. Globally, the ratio of Catholics per priest worsened, as the number of Catholics per priest increased from 1,895 in 1980 to 2,965 in 2012.

Given the prevailing trends for population, parishes, and priests, the Church is likely to continue to realign in the coming decades. In 2012, Europe was home to less than one in four Catholics (23 percent). Yet this region still has 55 percent of all Catholic parishes and 45 percent of all Catholic priests. It is likely that Europe faces a future of fewer priests and more parish closures while growth in priests and parishes is likely to continue in Asia and Africa.

Other Major Findings
Some of the additional major findings from the report include:

• The Catholic population of Europe in 2050 is expected to be about 5 percent smaller than it is today, due to sub-replacement rate fertility and immigration adding few Catholics to the overall population. Even with fewer Catholics and relatively low levels of weekly Mass attendance, the Church in Europe will struggle in the future to provide access to Masses and sacraments in its many parishes given its rapidly declining population of priests. This will likely negatively impact levels of sacramental practice that have already been ebbing in recent years.
• Diocesan bishops, priests, and deacons are increasing in number in the Americas as the number of religious priests, brothers, and sisters decline. The Catholic population of this region is expected to grow from 598.8 million now to 690.1 million in 2040. This region is in need of many new parishes, with the ratio of Catholics per parish currently exceeding 10,000. Sacramental practice in the Americas has been waning and some of this may be related to issues of access to nearby parishes with available priests.
• In Africa, high fertility rates and expanding life expectancies will dramatically increase the number of Catholics from 198.6 million now to 460.4 million in 2040. Although the number of priests, religious sisters, and parishes are expanding quickly here, these will undoubtedly lag behind population growth. More parishes are needed as weekly Mass attendance levels among African Catholics averages 70 percent. The numbers of baptisms and first communions in Africa are rising annually but numbers of confirmations and marriages have recently leveled off.
• In Asia, the Catholic population is expected to grow from 134.6 million now to 192.6 million in 2040. Here, a slight majority of Catholics, on average, report attending Mass every week and there is no evidence of decline in Mass attendance rates in recent years. There is strong growth in Asia in the numbers of religious priests, brothers, and sisters, as well as diocesan priests. New parishes are also increasing in number. Unlike most other regions, the Church in Asia has experienced growing numbers of marriages in the Church. In 1980 there were about 381,700 marriages celebrated in Asian parishes. In 2012, 626,380 marriages were celebrated here.
• Trends in the Church in Oceania tend to fall between those of Europe and the Americas. Relative stability is expected here in the coming decades.

Methodology
CARA transcribed Vatican data from the Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae for 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010, and the most recent year available, 2012. Additionally, CARA referenced statistics in the Vatican’s Annuario Pontifico when necessary. Where possible, CARA also provides projections for data into the future using statistical forecasting and the U.S. Census Bureau’s International Data Base. CARA also references data from publicly available surveys including: The World Values Survey, The Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, The International Social Survey Programme, the regional “barometer series” (e.g., Eurobarometer, Latinobarómetro), as well as recent research from the Pew Research Center on Global Christianity. In addition to managing surveys in the Americas for the first wave of the World Values Survey in the 1980s, CARA has previously explored global trends in the Catholic Church with Global Catholicism: Portrait of a World Church (2002). Global data are also always available on our Frequently Requested Church Statistics page.

Gender Pay Gap in the Church Smaller than in the White House

A few weeks ago Frank Bruni wrote a piece entitled “Catholicism Undervalues Women.” Bruni argues that what women in the Catholic Church are paid doesn’t really matter (“Pay isn’t the primary issue”). This post focuses on the interesting point Bruni’s piece teases—even if he considers it unimportant. Are women working for the Church being paid as much as men? This still seems to me to be a significantly compelling issue in testing whether the Church “undervalues women.”

One important thing to consider is that the Church is a global institution with many hierarchical layers. Beyond pay, there has been some recent discussion about the possibility of female cardinals and deaconesses (1, 2, 3, 4). In the here and now, Michael O'Loughlin over at Crux recently looked at the number of women in high-level U.S. diocesan positions. In this post, I’ll address what is happening at the parish-level in the United States with an emphasis on pay.

First it is important to set a benchmark. For example, the gender pay gap within the White House is 12 cents. Men earn an average of $88,600 per year and women $78,400. That means for every dollar men earn working for the Obama Administration, women earn 12 cents less. The gap at the White House is better than what the Administration says this is for women nationally where for every dollar earned by men, women earn 23 cents less. The Pew Research Center disagrees with the White House math and instead estimates that women earn 16 cents less per dollar than men nationally (down from 36 cents in 1980).

The best data CARA has on pay within parishes was collected in a national survey in the fall 2010 and published in 2011 by The National Association of Church Personnel Administrators (NACPA) as part of the Emerging Models of Pastoral Leadership project. The survey included information on 5,701 persons working in parishes in ministry and non-ministry positions in 433 randomly selected parishes. The data summarized below includes only those being paid. Parishes often rely on significant numbers of volunteers for some of its ministries (about 37 percent of those working in parishes volunteer and 59 percent of volunteers are men—many of them permanent deacons).

Overall, when one includes all paid staff including clergy, vowed religious, and other lay persons, women earn 11 cents less than men per dollar earned (or $2,560 fewer dollars per year). Although a gap still exists, the situation in the Church is apparently better than in the White House or the country as a whole.

When one excludes clergy and religious sisters or brothers working in parishes the gap increases to 17 cents per dollar (note: pastors typically earn among the lowest wages in the parish at $12.90 per hour, although they do receive the benefits of free room and board). However, this includes many positions that are part-time or per service (e.g., musicians, groundskeeping). When one restricts the analysis further to lay persons working 35 or more hours per week the pay gap decreases to 10 cents per dollar. Note that CARA prefers to use medians for income rather than means. If we were to use average pay instead this pay gap would be even smaller at 8 cents per dollar.

Many critics of the type of pay statistics discussed above note that these do not necessarily represent a measurement of “equal pay for equal work.” There are many different jobs aggregated in these data. Do women earn less than men doing the same type of work? It depends on the ministry or service being provided. Among lay administrators (e.g., Parish life Coordinators, Parish Administrators, Pastoral Ministry Directors) the pay gap is bigger at 26 cents per dollar. Yet among those working in social or pastoral ministries (e.g., Family Life Directors, Pastoral Counselors, Parish Nurses, Senior Ministry Directors, Social Ministry Directors) the pay gap swings entirely in the other direction with men earning 27 cents less per dollar than women. There are also disparities among those working in facilities management (e.g., maintenance workers, custodians, cooks, housekeepers) and business management and bookkeeping (Business Managers, Bookkeepers, Account Clerks, Stewardship Coordinators) with women earning 25 cents and 21 cents less on the dollar, respectively. In nearly all other staff areas, pay gaps are much smaller—even down to 3 cents per dollar for general office staff and reception (e.g., Office Managers, Administrative Assistants, Secretaries, Receptionists).

The preceding table still aggregates people doing different jobs in similar types of work. If one moves down to specific job titles and descriptions another portrait is evident. Here are results spanning some of the more common staff positions:

Pastoral Associates or Assistants serve as a chief assistant to the pastor in a parish, coordinating several parish activities and programs. Lay men serving in these positions earn a median annual wage of $42,500 compared to lay women who earn $36,823 representing a 13 cent wage gap per dollar.

Youth Ministry Directors lead parish youth ministry programs including catechetics, spiritual formation, worship, leadership training, and service opportunities. Lay men serving in these positions earn a median annual wage of $37,224 compared to lay women who earn $32,000 representing a 14 cent wage gap per dollar.

Catechetical Ministry Directors lead religious education programs including formation for adults, teens, and children. They supervise staff and volunteers in the program. Lay men serving in these positions earn a median annual wage of $39,936 compared to lay women who earn $38,444 representing a 4 cent wage gap per dollar.

Music Directors plan and coordinate parish music often including several choirs and musician groups. They also supervise and train musicians and cantors and plan special music performances. Lay men serving in these positions earn a median annual wage of $40,000 compared to lay women who earn $39,690 representing a 1 cent wage gap per dollar.

Bookkeepers maintain records for general ledger, subsidiary ledgers, payroll, accounts receivable, accounts payable and monitor current financial information for all funds. Lay men serving in these positions earn a median annual wage of $30,000 compared to lay women who earn $31,164 representing a -4 cent wage gap per dollar.

CARA conducted a smaller national survey of 532 Catholic staff members in 246 randomly selected parishes in 2012. Among those paid, this study estimated a median salary for men of $32,000 and $31,000 for women representing only a 3 cent gender wage gap overall. Frank Bruni should know that the Catholic Church in the United States still has some work to do on pay equality but it is less work than many other American institutions—including the White House.

Currency image courtesy of Vic.

The Island of Misfit Polls

There you go again (1, 2, 3)... According to the Pew Research Center, "Catholics appear to be declining both as a percentage of the population and in absolute numbers" in the United States. But are Catholics disappearing anywhere else other than within in the walls of the Pew Research Center?

As shown in the figure above, the self-identified Catholic affiliation percentage since 2010 has mostly varied between 21% and 26% among surveys conducted by Gallup, Pew, PRRI (data are only available for analysis from 2010 to 2013), and the General Social Survey (GSS). The average of all these polls is 23.2%. This is generally consistent with a trend that began in the late 1940s in Gallup's surveys and has persisted through the GSS series that began in the early 1970s. The only series on the figure above that shows a downward trend (i.e., the dashed lines) is Pew's. The current study estimates that 20.8% of U.S. adults are Catholic. This is down from 23.9% in a similar study conducted by Pew in 2007.

Pew is taking the difference between these two survey estimates quite literally; so much so that they have attempted to do a population trend analysis with just these two data points. It takes a special kind of hubris to treat survey data as if it were a census and declare a trend with an N of 2 (...knowing that this result was not generally evident in other polling, which is noted well after the declaration on page 115 in Appendix C of the report). This will either turn out to be a brilliant claim ("we said it first") or a bit of a blemish for survey research. Time will tell and to be honest it already has as the 2014 GSS came out of the field after Pew and that study estimated 25.4% of U.S. adults are Catholic. As the principal investigator for the GSS noted in the Wall Street Journal today, "There’s no hint of any decline."

I've heard Pew researchers claim that the question wording they use allows people to be honest and more easily admit they have no religious affiliation (i.e., reducing social desirability bias). But I believe PRRI uses the same question and I don't see the same trend in their data that is evident in Pew's surveys (PRRI's American Values Atlas estimates that 23% of adults were Catholic in 2014). I don't think it's the question wording.

The lower than average Catholic estimate in Pew's study could be a reflection of some sampling issue. As noted on page 71 of Pew's report, only 48% of Latino respondents self identified as Catholic in the study. Among the surveys (using bilingual or English and Spanish interviewers) shown in the figure above, the typical poll estimates a majority of Hispanic or Latino adults self-identify as Catholic. Accurately sampling and surveying Spanish-speaking Hispanics/Latinos in the United States is one of the more challenging tasks survey researchers have. CARA's meta-analysis of recent national surveys indicates this can often be the source of a survey estimate for Catholic affiliation "falling low" when aggregated with other studies.

As I often tell my students at Georgetown, surveys are blurry portraits of reality. Treat them as such. There is always more to worry about than the margin of sampling error. Confidence intervals still exist even when you interview 35,000 people. And beyond that there are many potential error components that have nothing to do with chance. I have no doubt that the number of Americans who are religiously unaffiliated is rising. There are pieces of data that indicate to me that the Catholic affiliation percentage in the U.S. will fall in the future (...at the same time, the Catholic population will likely continue to grow). As a scientist I will always follow the data. But I am rarely convinced by a finding that is inconsistent with what most others are registering. I've read Pew's report. I'm generally a fan of their work. But I still feel I have no credible evidence that the Catholic population is declining in the United States. It is possible but not very likely. In other words, statistically speaking, don't bet on it.