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Friday, May 22nd, 2015

American downfall: Why a demographic crisis is great news for the country

Author:     Patricia Miller
Source:     Salon
Publication Date:     Thursday, May 21, 2015 08:27 AM PDT
 Link: American downfall: Why a demographic crisis is great news for the country
Stephan:   The decline of religion trend gets very little coverage. It is essentially people stopping a behavior usually quietly over a period of time. Boring compared to the fanaticism and outrageous soundbits of the Theocratic Right. But, in fact, the decline of involvement with religion is a major social trend in the U.S., as this report spells out.
Cardinal Timothy Dolan and Rick Santorum. Credit: AP/Seth Wenig

Cardinal Timothy Dolan and Rick Santorum.
Credit: AP/Seth Wenig

The big news out of the new Pew poll on Americans and religion was the precipitous drop in the number of Americans calling themselves “Christian” and its potential impact on the Christian Right and future religion itself in the U.S.

But there’s another number lurking in the poll that may prove just as consequential: there are 3 million fewer people calling themselves Catholic today than in 2007, the last time Pew conducted their extensive poll. As a result, the share of the U.S. population that identifies as Catholic dropped from approximately 24 percent to 21 percent.

Why is this such big news? Because despite unpopular popes and still-simmering pedophilia scandals, the percentage of Catholics in the U.S. has remained remarkably steady for decades. The relative stability of the Catholic population allowed many on the Catholic right to dismiss calls for reform in the church and gave the Catholic bishops political clout when it came to opposing things like no-cost contraception in […]

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