A sign of the future of the Roman Catholic Church in the US

The future of Roman Catholicism in the US?

This National Catholic Reporter (NCR) article caught my eye since it is local: Pittsburgh plan would consolidate 188 parishes into 48 groups. What we are seeing, I think, is nothing less than a snapshot of the future of the Roman Catholic Church in the US.

From the article:

There will be grief, but a new, more effective church outreach will emerge out of a massive planned consolidation in the Pittsburgh Diocese, diocesan spokesman Bob DeWitt told NCR.

He spoke after a diocesan planning commission, which includes DeWitt, recommended to Bishop David Zubik that the diocese arrange its 188 current parishes into 48 groups. The plan now goes to the bishop for a decision …

While other archdioceses and dioceses in the Northeast and Midwest have closed and consolidated parishes in the past three decades, including Detroit, Philadelphia, Chicago, New York and Boston, and, most recently, Hartford, Connecticut, no diocese has undertaken such a massive change. The plan will reshape the concept of parish in the Pittsburgh Diocese's six counties.

The diocese needs to act boldly to deal with a decline in the number of priests and Catholics in the pews, said DeWitt.

Islam's depopulation bomb

I recently read a prediction that Islam is the world's fastest growing religion, on track to overtake Christianity in a few decades. I find that wildly implausible. Islam has very little appeal.

But be that as it may, here's another trend that may undercut that prediction:

http://www.hoover.org/research/fertility-decline-muslim-world

http://foreignpolicy.com/2012/03/09/the-islamic-worlds-quiet-revolution/

Raising godless kids

http://www.vox.com/2014/4/28/5659984/only-30-percent-of-kids-raised-as-atheists-stay-that-way-as-adults

A Latino Reformation

I know this is somewhat dated news, but demographic trends don't quickly change. It came across along with the news about the Pope's trip to Rio, and I thought I'd pass it along:

A Latino Reformation:

Hispanics in the United States are becoming evangelicals at a rapid rate Time Magazine reports this week.

"Latino evangelicals are one of the fastest growing segments of America's churchgoing millions," said Elizabeth Dias, the author of the report.

Time calls the phenomenon "The Latino Reformation".

Dias's account is Time's cover story in its April 4 edition.

"They call themselves Evangelicos," Time's managing editor Richard Stengel told MSNBC."They are Latino Americans who have embraced an evangelical form of Protestantism."

"Its changing the church, the country and it's fascinating," said Stengel.

The Time article also indicates that Hispanics are turning to evangelicalism because they believe it gives them a more personal relationship with God than Catholicism. There is no priest as a "middleman".

Currently 62 percent of the approximately 52 millionHispanics in the U.S. are Catholic according to a 2012 Pew poll.

Stengel predicted that by 2050 half will be evangelical.

"It is difficult to track the groundswell of these new Protestants," said Dias in a background story. "They often meet in storefronts or living rooms, and language barriers complicate the census process."

After Dias began noticing a number of Hispanic churches in her travels around the Washington, D.C. area she decided to investigate. She attended two of the largest congregations located in suburban Maryland.

"What I discovered signaled a Latino Reformation", she said."Both churches were doubling in size every few years.

Dias met with many of the people attending and listened to their stories.

"To the mainstream American culture, and even other white evangelical churches, they were invisible", she said. "But they were hiding in plain sight."

"The story of both churches repeats itself across America", added Dias.

This is not huge news, except that Latinos typically are recognized as the largest Roman Catholic demographic group in the country right now.