1.4 percent Growth of Catholics worldwide

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A 1.4 percent growth of Catholics in the world and an increase in the number of priests and seminarians, especially in Africa, Asia and America has been documented by the 2008 Pontifical Annuario, which includes data from 2000 to 2006.
Catholics worldwide number 16 million more than the previous year, totaling one billion and 131 million, nearly a fifth of the world population. Half of the faithful live in the Americas, while in Europe the Catholic presence stands at 25 percent, in Asia 10 percent.
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 The number of bishops has grown to just over 350. This growth is more pronounced in America and Asia, while slightly below the overall average in Africa, Europe and Oceania. 
 Priests have gone from the number of a little more than 405,000 to over 407,000, with a total variation of 0.51 percent. Their presence in the world has been gradually rising since the year 2000, with a downsizing in Europe and America and an increase in Africa and Asia.


 Seminarians have also increased 0.9 percent with a total of more than 115 thousand, most of whom live in the Americas, followed by those from Africa and Asia. Only a quarter are European.


 The number of religious is also increasing, particularly in Africa and Asia, where, there are about twice as many priests, and 14 times the number of non-ordained religious.
Video here:

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unless I am mistaken, a 1.4 % growth would in terms of proportion to world population be a decline.
 
Ok, but how many of them believe in the Real Presence, no salvation outside the Church, etc.? That’s the real question. There’s over a Billion people who call themselves Catholic. I suspect the “real” Catholic population is much, much lower.
 
Nohome said:
World population growth rate is presently 1.16%, so this is a net gain.

xist.org/earth/population1.aspx

Nohome
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The way the math pans out (you can’t simply take the difference between the %) it is a growth proportional to world population of about 0.237% which for all we know may even be within a reasonable statistical margin of error.
 
dbg said:
The way the math pans out (you can’t simply take the difference between the %) it is a growth proportional to world population of about 0.237% which for all we know may even be within a reasonable statistical margin of error.
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Exactly. And the rates of growth of Hinduism, LDS and especially Islam are significantly larger than the population growth. And the rate of growth of agnosticism/atheism. I’d like to find those figures.
 
rien said:
Exactly. And the rates of growth of Hinduism, LDS and especially Islam are significantly larger than the population growth. And the rate of growth of agnosticism/atheism. I’d like to find those figures.
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Right. I don’t know what the margin of error is, but it seems like a 1.4% growth is very close to the 1.16% world population number. It’s certainly good if we are continuing to grow. But I’m concerned about factors working against us (our own faults really) - Catholic family size is too small, and we’re not converting enough people.

Also, another big factor is that we’re losing too many.

Actually, with that number in mind, with the number of Catholics that leave the Faith each year – a 1.4% growth sounds a lot better.

I just think that we all have to do a lot better (I point this criticism to myself first) to bring people into the True Faith and to evangelize. There are a lot of people who are searching for God also – they would make great Catholics in the Church.

The growth is good – but we should set our standards very high.
 
rien said:
Exactly. And the rates of growth of Hinduism, LDS and especially Islam are significantly larger than the population growth. And the rate of growth of agnosticism/atheism. I’d like to find those figures.
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Right, but percent favors small groups. Suppose I open the world wide church of nohome. If my wife and kids join me, I can boast a 300% growth in just one year.

The RCC is almost a fifth of the world’s population. So long as it is growing faster than the world’s growth rate, it has done well.

Nohome
 
dbg said:
The way the math pans out (you can’t simply take the difference between the %) it is a growth proportional to world population of about 0.237% which for all we know may even be within a reasonable statistical margin of error.
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They are related rates and it is in the favor of the RCC.

Nohome
 
Nohome said:
They are related rates and it is in the favor of the RCC.

Nohome
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Right on! And with other groups, such as the LDS and JWs boasting of high growth rates, I think it is interesting to point out that this number (16 million) is far more than they converted in the last year (that was an unqualified comment, someone feel free to correct if need be).

This is a significant increase.

RAR
 
Nohome said:
Right, but percent favors small groups. Suppose I open the world wide church of nohome. If my wife and kids join me, I can boast a 300% growth in just one year.

The RCC is almost a fifth of the world’s population. So long as it is growing faster than the world’s growth rate, it has done well.

Nohome
Click to expand...
I think to take into account the small group factor you would do this:

Percentage proportional decrease in the non-adherents

So for example, if a group went from 1% to 2% of the world population, that would be going from 99% to 98% or about 1.01%

And if a group went from 60% to 61% of world pop. that would be going from 40 to 39% or about 2.5% So it’s roughly 2.5 times more impressive in this case.
 
I suspect birth rates of muslim nations are exagerated, and many numbers in the world population estimates are very questionable - nations like Brasil and China don’t ‘count’ every head, they estimate masses of poor individuals, sometimes with plain photography for crying out loud.

And places like Africa have gains to be made if they exagerate their numbers; it helps them in getting additional aid from richer countries.

Overall, I am not too concerned about population growth of the Church (not anymore). I believe a lot of the statitics brougt forth, especially from the UN for example, are politically biased. And when everything is discussed and concluded, we can do no better than to first look after the health of the Church as it is, rather than have an expansionist outlook. If the Church is healthy within Herself, everything else will follow naturally.
 
I personally feel that this is good news. While the growth certainly could have been more and it would have been even better, just a 1.4 percent growth is good too. 🙂
 
Mister_De said:
. I suspect the “real” Catholic population is much, much lower.
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I suspect you are very correct 😦

I’m supposing this from lookingat attendances at various churches in my own parish, and also in the parishes of my home country - catholic to the core but a tiny portion of the population even bother to go to Mass, never mind actually believing and living a moral catholic life. By this I mean, millions of young couples cohabitating and having sex outside of marriage, universal use of condoms, porn, etc, dont believe abortion is a sin, its the womans right to chose, etc etc etc … but they tick the box on the census saying catholic 😦
 
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