Catholics in numbers

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How dareth thou speaketh against The Catholic Church!

LOL!

Welcome Yoeme! My sparring partner!

Anyway, I heard that 30% of American Catholics are considered the diehard devout kind.

That works out to about 21 Million hardcore Papists.

That still makes it the biggest congregation of any Christian denomination.

😃
 
Yoeme said:
Ok the number game…

Ain’t buying it.

How many true Catholics, Catholics of conviction are there???

let us be honest, it is not that high.
And it is the new comers that are more convicted than the craddle Catholics (those born and raised in the Church).

Number game is a joke.

Salvation is not about numbers it is about conviction. It is about the heart and soul of humanity.

There are too many go through the motions Catholics.
There are too many Easter/Christmas may-be Ash Wednesday Catholics.

Consider the number of so called Catholics in the United States alone, how many are actually married by the Church, if they are married at all.

I am now and will always be Catholic, I will die Catholic. But I am honest, and will not sugar coat anything for my brothers and sisters.

At least the non catholics can say we did not know any better, what is the Catholic’s excuse?
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you’re right, it’s irrelevant. what is relevant is the authenticity of the Church and its teachings, the papacy, and its origin. it is because of these that the majority of Christians today are Catholic. if you want good times, good people, good music, good whatever, you go find a protestant church; if you want the complete, cold hard truth about Jesus, you go Catholic… and of course that’s not to say you can’t have all the “good” stuff as well. most Catholics are just to lazy and disinterested to find it, or are just unaware it exists.
 
The most popular religion in my state is Methodist. If all I was concerned about was popularity, I would be a Methodist. I am a Catholic because I believe that the Catholic religion is the most true. Popularity means nothing to me.
 
Out of the 1billion+ Catholics and the 1 billion+Muslims I can pretty much garrentee that there are more faithful Muslims who practice their faith then there are Catholics.

The religion that truly professes their faith in public is the religion that grows the fastest. In the first 1000 years after Rome converted to Christianity, the Christian members publicly practiced their religion and for about 1000 years the Catholic faithful lead faithful fullfilling lives. It didn’t matter if you were poor or if you were rich since during those times you were born into the lower or upper class. We were all children of God and Jesus is our savior.

It wasn’t till man wanted more worldly power and riches that the church lost its land and a major part of its influence on the world. Today I think it would be better for all Christians to publicly display their faith even if it means being fired from your job or kicked out of school. We need to protest against the ever advancing secular world not with words of hate or with insults but with our Love of Christ. If every christian prayed at least 1 time a day in public where people could see them the world would quickly change its misguided ways.
 
TDiGaetano said:
Out of the 1billion+ Catholics and the 1 billion+Muslims I can pretty much garrentee that there are more faithful Muslims who practice their faith then there are Catholics.

The religion that truly professes their faith in public is the religion that grows the fastest. In the first 1000 years after Rome converted to Christianity, the Christian members publicly practiced their religion and for about 1000 years the Catholic faithful lead faithful fullfilling lives. It didn’t matter if you were poor or if you were rich since during those times you were born into the lower or upper class. We were all children of God and Jesus is our savior.

It wasn’t till man wanted more worldly power and riches that the church lost its land and a major part of its influence on the world. Today I think it would be better for all Christians to publicly display their faith even if it means being fired from your job or kicked out of school. We need to protest against the ever advancing secular world not with words of hate or with insults but with our Love of Christ. If every christian prayed at least 1 time a day in public where people could see them the world would quickly change its misguided ways.
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you’re right. a friend in Bible study yesterday mentioned that he saw some protestants in the ocean getting baptized and kind of sneered, but then realized that if all Christians, Catholic or protestant were to be so bold, the world would be a different place.

however, i think that if the Christians of the world were to unite, there would inevitably be dissent as time passes, and order would be needed. authority would be needed to instruct those who need clarification. there needs to be organization and authority, just like in any large body, or even in a single family. the whole process would start again and history would repeat itself, just as we have learned in school.

“weep for your children” and future generations.
 
Yoeme said:
At least the non catholics can say we did not know any better, what is the Catholic’s excuse?
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woe to the non-Catholic shepherds who did know though…

Catholic excuse - same as non-Catholics: ignorance. woe to our leaders. let us again weep for our children because we’re the product of our fathers… let us pray for us all…
 
So my brothers and sister, the real question is how do we give meaning to this number?

How do we battle, especially in the US, were so much of our faith is in contradiction to mainstream?

In the US, Pre-martial sex is ok, abortion is ok, greed and selfishness is essential. Exploitaion of our brothers and sisters a must.

How do we fight against the Monster?

How do we teach our youth about integrity?

To stand up for what is right, even it means you may be standing against your “friends”?

How do we as older Catholics, pass stregnth to the younger ones?

Our Beloved Late Pope, John Paul II, had so much skill with this, started World Youth Day and so forth. How can we learn from him this skill, to invegurate the youth?

A Church is only as Strong as the faith and conviction of its members.

Many have the seed planted, how do we show them to care for it? To water it, to nurture it and let it grow?
 
What do the numbers mean?

That more Christians prefer to be universal Christians than to belong to any other sect of Christianity.

For those who argue actual participation stats, I can guarentee you that no mega church equals the completeness and fullness of The Truth that only one Church has.

So, what do the numbers mean in attendees, if their getting it wrong anyway or at the very least, if their receiving incomplete Christianity?

Quality over quantity always.

Thank God I’m Catholic.

(now the hard part, living up to the title…:o )
 
mark_a said:
Looks like Islam is moving pretty fast.

Could it be that we Christians are contracepting ourselves into oblivion and will have Islam forced upon our Christian decendants in the future?
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*Contracepting and abortion leads to more than most folks care to accept. *
Going against the will of God has consequences even to non believers.
Increase and multiply or the land will belong to somebody else :yup: !
 
I would caution against being fooled by numbers and the details of how many Catholics practice their faith and and how many do not!

There is the moment ‘they’ ask you when they conduct these surveys or you register your faith. At that moment, when you say you are Catholic, you have professed your faith before Our Maker! IMHO, you have done something significant enough that “differentiates” you from others. How you live and practice that profession is between you and He!

Each Catholic has the potential to be “light to others” however miniscule they may think their effort. It isn’t just in attending Mass, religiously, but in the life one lives.

We already know that The Church will never be overcome. But ourselves and loved ones CAN be. If we all start as individuals and through the home, and every family member becomes ‘the light of the world’ He says we should be, compounded and combined with every other family, what you see is global coverage.

The formulae has not changed. The parable of the children remains apropos.

:cool:
 
Deconi said:
I would caution against being fooled by numbers and the details of how many Catholics practice their faith and and how many do not!

There is the moment ‘they’ ask you when they conduct these surveys or you register your faith. At that moment, when you say you are Catholic, you have professed your faith before Our Maker! IMHO, you have done something significant enough that “differentiates” you from others. How you live and practice that profession is between you and He!

Each Catholic has the potential to be “light to others” however miniscule they may think their effort. It isn’t just in attending Mass, religiously, but in the life one lives.

We already know that The Church will never be overcome. But ourselves and loved ones CAN be. If we all start as individuals and through the home, and every family member becomes ‘the light of the world’ He says we should be, compounded and combined with every other family, what you see is global coverage.

The formulae has not changed. The parable of the children remains apropos.

:cool:
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Deconi, I assume you mean teh story of the protocal son…

And I see yourt point, those thatgo astray and return. We how have remained, should not be jealous when God welcomes them back with open arms.

I agree 100% there, and we should always welcome back our brothers and sisters.

Yet, we shold always keep our eyes open. There are som ethat pose as Catholic (Christians) yet are not. He who is the father of lies knows scriptures to. We will not know the time of of our Lords Return, yet we do know that Satan will take control before, for Revelation tells us so. We must be on gaurd, watching for false prophets and those that would distort the truth.
 
Alexius said:
I’m curious what this proves…🤷
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You aren’t alone 🙂​

If some Catholic posters are to be believed, not many Catholics count as “true Catholics”, because they are heretics or automatically excommunicated or use ABC or for some other reason - which means that the head count of Catholics that gives a stat of a world-wide Catholic population of 1,300,000,000 is not 1,300,000,000 after all.

So which is it to be:
  • estimation by counting heads: which includes all those Catholics who support abortion, homosexuality, practice ABC, or believe all sorts of heresies
    or -
  • counting only “true/faithful Catholics” as Catholic - which may cut the figure down to below 480 million, thereby leading to the conclusion that there are more Protestants than Catholics ?
    Both interpretations of the stats are not possible.
It is certainly possible that millions upon millions outside the verifiable confines of the CC are Catholic in God’s eyes, even though the CC may know nothing of them - but they cannot be numbered if they are unknown. And the same reasoning applies to the not-really-true-Catholic users of ABC, etc.; they may be more really Catholic in God’s eyes than a number of “true/faithful Catholics”. But that brings us back to the stats, without giving us any way of saying what use they are as a measure of Catholicism.

All this is quite apart from the meaninglessness of mere quantity (of numbers) as a guide to quality (of Christian faith). If a plague swept away all Catholics save a dozen or so, that would not affect doctrinal principle: if the Pope is infallible, he is as infallible with a flock of two, as with a flock of 2,000 trillion. If he is not infallible even in principle, then it is immaterial how vast & numerous throughout the universe his flock may be.

Number-worship would disqualify the Apostles out of hand - if numbers prove truth, then Roman paganism in the time of the Apostles must be true, & Christian faith either one way among many, or a fiction.

Faith is not founded on anything so useless as mere bigness of numbers or geography or earthly power, but on the word of God. Every other support but that is dust & ashes.

Applying stats to what is not measurable by stats is silly. All that figures give is a very approximate head count.
 
adherents.com/adh_branches.html#Christianity

The notes under the charts define it all.

Wow!

It’s still amazing to me that we are well over 1 Billion (with a capitol “B”)!

I guess The Apostles did their job pretty well when they made disciples of “all” nations.

Hat’s off to The Catholic Church… :tiphat:

Bravo! :clapping:
 
Gottle_of_Geer said:

You aren’t alone 🙂​

If some Catholic posters are to be believed, not many Catholics count as “true Catholics”, because they are heretics or automatically excommunicated or use ABC or for some other reason - which means that the head count of Catholics that gives a stat of a world-wide Catholic population of 1,300,000,000 is not 1,300,000,000 after all.

So which is it to be:
  • estimation by counting heads: which includes all those Catholics who support abortion, homosexuality, practice ABC, or believe all sorts of heresies
    or -
  • counting only “true/faithful Catholics” as Catholic - which may cut the figure down to below 480 million, thereby leading to the conclusion that there are more Protestants than Catholics ?
    Both interpretations of the stats are not possible.
It is certainly possible that millions upon millions outside the verifiable confines of the CC are Catholic in God’s eyes, even though the CC may know nothing of them - but they cannot be numbered if they are unknown. And the same reasoning applies to the not-really-true-Catholic users of ABC, etc.; they may be more really Catholic in God’s eyes than a number of “true/faithful Catholics”. But that brings us back to the stats, without giving us any way of saying what use they are as a measure of Catholicism.

All this is quite apart from the meaninglessness of mere quantity (of numbers) as a guide to quality (of Christian faith). If a plague swept away all Catholics save a dozen or so, that would not affect doctrinal principle: if the Pope is infallible, he is as infallible with a flock of two, as with a flock of 2,000 trillion. If he is not infallible even in principle, then it is immaterial how vast & numerous throughout the universe his flock may be.

Number-worship would disqualify the Apostles out of hand - if numbers prove truth, then Roman paganism in the time of the Apostles must be true, & Christian faith either one way among many, or a fiction.

Faith is not founded on anything so useless as mere bigness of numbers or geography or earthly power, but on the word of God. Every other support but that is dust & ashes.

Applying stats to what is not measurable by stats is silly. All that figures give is a very approximate head count.
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Well if you didn’t want to accept the norm for estimation of adherents and wanted to break it down into sub-groups,then 480 Million would still be bigger than any one group of Protestants. And even bigger if you chose to compare apples with apples (devout protestants vs devout catholics).

No matter how one tries to slice it, we were first, we are the largest and we have the most complete Christian religion in the entire world.
 
2ndGen said:
No matter how one tries to slice it, we were first, we are the largest and we have the most complete Christian religion in the entire world.
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but, but… but numbers don’t matter! shoot me now. :rolleyes:
 
Yes they do!

We’re number 1!
We’re number 1!
We’re number 1!

:dancing:

:rotfl:
 
:tsktsk:

Jesus on judging other’s faults…
Matthew 7:1
“Judge not, lest ye be judged!”

…besides…

2 Corinthians 11:
“Since many boast according to the flesh, I too will boast.”

:extrahappy:

Shout it from the rooftops!

Jesus’ Church is like a shining city atop of a hill that all can see!

No one lights a candle and covers it!
 
2ndGen said:
:tsktsk:

Jesus on judging other’s faults…
Matthew 7:1
“Judge not, lest ye be judged!”
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Not my sacred writings, hon.😉 Just reminding you of your own.

However, yes, that does indeed seem to be an apropos verse, as it certainly seems that there is a lot of judging based on numbers going on here (particularly in looking at various branches of Christianity) in addition to some glaring examples of pridefulness.

As to “judging” my objections to this argument, I am quite content to let that happen as the problems are glaringly obvious. The basic issue still remains. Numbers only prove the popularity of something at a particular time, not its inherent worth or truth. You cannot prove the validity of a religious belief based on popularity, unless you are willing to accept that the minute something else becomes more popular, your belief is therefore no longer right, the other guy’s is.

It is purely and simply a bad argument for the purpose the OP intends. Jumping around, boasting and yelling it louder only makes the bad argument louder, it doesn’t make it any better.🤷
 
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