Immigration vs. Abortion: A Numbers Game?

[Geremia]

Are bishops playing a numbers game with respect to immigration more so than they are with respect to abortion?

Here’s the Arizona bishops’ official statement regarding an Arizona “anti-immigration” bill:
diocesephoenix.org/acc/documents/BishopsStmtonLegisREvulnerablepopulationsMarch2010.pdf

With respect to demographics, this is really interesting:
religions.pewforum.org/pdf/report-religious-landscape-study-full.pdf

“Catholicism has experienced the greatest net losses as a result of affiliation changes. While nearly one-in-three Americans (31%) were raised in the Catholic faith, today fewer than one-in-four (24%) describe themselves as Catholic. These losses would have been even more pronounced were it not for the offsetting impact of immigration. The Landscape Survey finds that among the foreign-born adult population, Catholics outnumber Protestants by nearly a two-to-one margin (46% Catholic vs. 24% Protestant); among native-born Americans, on the other hand, Protestants outnumber Catholics by an even larger margin (55% Protestant vs. 21% Catholic).” (p. 6).

“…the Catholic share of the U.S. adult population has held fairly steady in recent decades, at around 25%. What this apparent stability obscures, however, is the large number of people who have left the Catholic Church. Approximately one-third of the survey respondents who say they were raised Catholic no longer describe themselves as Catholic. This means that roughly 10% of all Americans are former Catholics. These losses, however, have been partly offset by the number of people who have changed their affiliation to Catholicism (2.6% of the adult population) but more importantly by the disproportionately high number of Catholics among immigrants to the U.S.” (p. 7).

If 40 million Americans are foreign born, and 46% of them are Catholic, about 6% of the U.S. population are foreign born Catholic. So about 70% of the Church’s growth is due to immigrants! (I think conversion rates are currently about 1/3 of what they used to be before Vatican II, and I think immigration has quadrupled.) And about 13% of those who loose their faith are foreign-born Hispanics (so ~1.3% of U.S. pop.; cara.georgetown.edu/Winter%202008.pdf ), so it does look like the future of the U.S. Church can rely heavily on immigration even if at most ~22% of them become “Americanized” (i.e., secularized) and lose their faith. Although about twice as many Hispanics as non-Hispanics have abortions (cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5808a1.htm#tab13 ), still their birthrate is sightly higher (about replacement level), but let’s pray that it doesn’t drop through increased contraception and abortion, the evil fruits of American secularism. We desperately need more evangelization, though; Fr. Kino et al.'s efforts were great, but we cannot passively rely on them forever.

Of course there’s much more to the war than numbers (cf. 2 Samuel 24:1-10); they’re only an indicator, not our god.

 

[Lypher]

Are bishops playing a numbers game with respect to immigration more so than they are with respect to abortion?

Here’s the Arizona bishops’ official statement regarding an Arizona “anti-immigration” bill:
diocesephoenix.org/acc/documents/BishopsStmtonLegisREvulnerablepopulationsMarch2010.pdf

With respect to demographics, this is really interesting:
religions.pewforum.org/pdf/report-religious-landscape-study-full.pdf

I personally believe that you can link the number of abortions with the number of illegals… If we had no aborations I don’t think we would have the need for the illegals to come to the country. 57 million Americans are not here with us.

If 40 million Americans are foreign born, and 46% of them are Catholic, about 6% of the U.S. population are foreign born Catholic. So about 70% of the Church’s growth is due to immigrants! (I think conversion rates are currently about 1/3 of what they used to be before Vatican II, and I think immigration has quadrupled.) And about 13% of those who loose their faith are foreign-born Hispanics (so ~1.3% of U.S. pop.; cara.georgetown.edu/Winter%202008.pdf ), so it does look like the future of the U.S. Church can rely heavily on immigration even if at most ~22% of them become “Americanized” (i.e., secularized) and lose their faith. Although about twice as many Hispanics as non-Hispanics have abortions (cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5808a1.htm#tab13 ), still their birthrate is sightly higher (about replacement level), but let’s pray that it doesn’t drop through increased contraception and abortion, the evil fruits of American secularism. We desperately need more evangelization, though; Fr. Kino et al.'s efforts were great, but we cannot passively rely on them forever.

Of course there’s much more to the war than numbers (cf. 2 Samuel 24:1-10); they’re only an indicator, not our god.

 

[Geremia]

I personally believe that you can link the number of abortions with the number of illegals… If we had no aborations I don’t think we would have the need for the illegals to come to the country. 57 million Americans are not here with us.

So basically the Church in the U.S. could be about 20% bigger [68 million current U.S. catholics + 1/4 of 57 million aborted (=~14 million, since ~1/4 of Americans are Catholic) = ~82 million] were all the ~14 million Catholics not aborted? This would actually make the Catholic percentage about 27% of the U.S. population! Now that would be growth!

 

[Lypher]

So basically the Church in the U.S. could be about 20% bigger [68 million current U.S. catholics + 1/4 of 57 million aborted (=~14 million, since ~1/4 of Americans are Catholic) = ~82 million] were all the ~14 million Catholics not aborted? This would actually make the Catholic percentage about 27% of the U.S. population! Now that would be growth!

Unfortunately I do not know if the abortion rate for Catholics is a straight line. In other words even if we are 20% of the population I am not sure if we had 20% of the deaths. I would tend to think that Catholics as a whole probably have fewer abortions, clinical that is, but what is killing us is Contraception. I would venture to bet that our numbers would have been significantly higher if we had actually obeyed God and were fruitful. We also would have changed the character of the country. I would bet that many Catholic homes might not be as affluent, however only in material things. I think that MANY of the Catholic schools would still be open and numbers attending Mass would be a lot higher, the whole culture of Death night not be here.

That being said many of the children that are not here would have been filling the jobs that illegals are filling today. This is all NON provable supposition, but following the logic it does make sense.

God Bless You…