Muslims more numerous than Catholics: Vatican

[rien]

Fortunately, truth is not a numbers game.

I do want to point out the erroneous statement in the article, however. The article states that Muslims outnumber Catholics as the worlds single largest religious denomination. But Muslims are not a single denomination, having many internal divisions, just as Christianity does.

Therefore, this is not really an apples to apples comparison. Comparing the number of Catholics to the number of Sunnis would be more relevant.

Yeah, but Christians are stagnant as a % of the wordl’s population. Muslims are growing. By mid to late century Muslims will ounmber Chritians - Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant.

Catholics are slowly shrinking as a percentage of the world’s population and mainline Protestants are dropping significantly. Pentecostals are growing as a percentage of the world’s population but not enough to offset the declines among other Chritian groups as a percentage of the world’s population.

 

[rien]

You have cerainly put your finger on the most important point in all of this. God bless your parents,Actually, He has in abundance.

Here’s how I responded to an Iraqi Christian who wrote with troubled about this news.

I think this has happened for several reasons. 1. As the article indicated they produce many offspring and Catholics tend to contracept them out of existence. This is disobedient to Church teaching and because so many do so without seeming consequence, 2. Many Catholics figure they can pick and choose what areas they are going to follow and which they aren’t. 3. For the time being Muslims tend to be more effective in their “evangelistic” efforts. They have a very simple, though erroneous, message. They are very effective in their prison outreach and we not so much. Because they have more children there are more young people who proclaim their message and in many areas “convert or die” is very effective.

Their are some encouraging signs. There are many new Catholic converts willing to go out of their way to be obedient and to evangelize. There are many Muslims who are sick of the violent ways of many Muslims and are rebelling against them and converting.

But I must say, in my experience as a college teacher, I’ve found a higher percentage of Muslims who are passionate about their false religion than I do Catholics about our true relgion. Part of it is poor training and part of it is that secular colleges have an open door policy toward teaching Islam and a closed door policy against teaching the Catholic faith. A higher percentage of Catholics know Islam than know Catholicism. What a fix we’ve got ourselves into.

Carson

One more thing: Many Catholics, seem to be too passive. I could be wrong but it seems like some figure that since the priest is religious they don’t need to be.

True about passion and beleif in their faith. Muslims are far more faithful than not just catholics but Chritians in general.

I wonder worldwide how many Muslims are in the mosque on friday compared to how many Chrtians. I would not be surprised if mosque going Muslims already outnumber church going Chritians.

 

[MugenOne]

Mosque going Muslims are about equal as church going Christians. I had spent numerous times in Bahrain. On Friday, the only grand mosque seen to be packed (there isn’t many mosque in Bahrain btw). I saw mostly poor Indians, Pakistanis, and Bangledashis. I guess, only poor folks are there to ask allah for help or something.

True about passion and beleif in their faith. Muslims are far more faithful than not just catholics but Chritians in general.

I wonder worldwide how many Muslims are in the mosque on friday compared to how many Chrtians. I would not be surprised if mosque going Muslims already outnumber church going Chritians.

 

[ASimpleSinner]

What is it that Islam is doing that increases their popularity? Or should I ask; what is it that Catholics and Christians are doing that is allowing our popularity to slip?

Having babies. FULL STOP

The nations with the highest fertility rates per capita are Moslem nations. The nations in demographic decline in the West are post-Christian.

Marrying late and contracepting are HUGE factors.

Asking what makes Islam more popular and growing is like asking why Catholicism was so popular among my grandmother’s 13 brothers and sisters growing up in Quebec in the 1920s. (1) that was the family religion and (2) you were surrounded by families where that was the family religion (i.e. the culture).

How many families do you know that think 3 children would be at least one too many? That concept is foreign in most of the developping world - and that is where most Moslems still live.

 

[ASimpleSinner]

Pentecostals are growing as a percentage of the world’s population but not enough to offset the declines among other Chritian groups as a percentage of the world’s population.

But are Pentecostals growing due to conversions from non-Christians? If anything, I see the bulk of their growth being made up of folks who would otherwise be identified as being from a Christian culture even if not Church goers. I see that more as denomination shifting. I don’t think we see (1) higher fertility rates or (2) massive conversion to Pentecostalism among those that were never baptized.

They may talk as though converting Brazilian Catholics represents the growth of “Christianity” - I really don’t buy that.

 

[ASimpleSinner]

True about passion and beleif in their faith. Muslims are far more faithful than not just catholics but Chritians in general.

I wonder worldwide how many Muslims are in the mosque on friday compared to how many Chrtians. I would not be surprised if mosque going Muslims already outnumber church going Chritians.

Where most of the Moslems live, how many would be in a position to make it optional. It is so much a part of the law and culture that I am not sure the comparison works well if we are only looking at raw numbers. When Moslems enter non-Moslem cultures and assimilate, do the second and third generation demonstrate the same fidelity?

 

[cathgal]

When Moslems enter non-Moslem cultures and assimilate, do the second and third generation demonstrate the same fidelity?

They wouldn’t. Just you wait and see.

 

[ASimpleSinner]

They wouldn’t. Just you wait and see.

I don’t have to wait… I have seen it. The Americanized children and grandchildren that do not grow up with the call of muezzin end up being fairly secular.

 

[Canto]

excuse the spelling but there are Suni and Sheite Muslims, so if one takes Roman Catholicism seperatlly, shouldn’t we divide the Muslim figures?

 

[ASimpleSinner]

excuse the spelling but there are Suni and Sheite Muslims, so if one takes Roman Catholicism seperatlly, shouldn’t we divide the Muslim figures?

Yes, that is a valid point that many, many people have made…

But this was a poorly thought out story to begin with that was likely poorly-translated, is awkwardly worded, and is very misrepresented - it wasn’t like the vatican held a press conference where the Pope appeared and said “Ze Moslems haf tken over ze world!” But accurately reporting that these were the comments of a Vatican functionary would mean the story is not “as juicy” - and people around the world have gone for “the juicy”…

 

[Nan_S]

Fortunately, truth is not a numbers game.

I do want to point out the erroneous statement in the article, however. The article states that Muslims outnumber Catholics as the worlds single largest religious denomination. But Muslims are not a single denomination, having many internal divisions, just as Christianity does.

Therefore, this is not really an apples to apples comparison. Comparing the number of Catholics to the number of Sunnis would be more relevant.

I wholeheartedly agree with this point. I don’t deny the absolute numbers - there probably were more Catholics than total Muslims worldwide until recently. However, the news story is just another case of the secular news media’s spin-doctors comparing apples to oranges, when it omits all reference to “total Christians” vs. “total Muslims”. Is the number of “total Christians” diminishing, stagnant, or growing? You certainly don’t read that in this story.

I’d also like to remind folks that then-Cardinal Ratzinger predicted the Church may become smaller for a time so that it can grow again.

The two fastest growths of the Church were the ten years after the Eastern schism and the ten years after the Protestant Revolt, when the Church was shorn of dissenters and the remnant was shocked into coming back to its roots. God Himself purged and shrunk the Israelites so that they could grow again vigorously when He sent them into the desert for 40 years and into Babylon for 70 years.

Rev 3:15-17 "'I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth. For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing; not knowing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.

Now we have a new type of dissenters causing turmoil - the Catholics-in-name-only, the “warm fuzzy God loves everything” Catholics, and the “I can disagree but still be faithful” Catholics who seldom darken the church door.

I’ll trade away those kinds of lukewarm Catholics anyday to welcome back the now-schismatic groups who kept the Tridentine Mass alive. It would seem that Pope Benedict is moving that direction by working in cooperative coordination with the Orthodox and by re-authorizing the Tridentine Mass.

 

[Gabe_D]

Fortunately, truth is not a numbers game.

I do want to point out the erroneous statement in the article, however. The article states that Muslims outnumber Catholics as the worlds single largest religious denomination. But Muslims are not a single denomination, having many internal divisions, just as Christianity does.

Therefore, this is not really an apples to apples comparison. Comparing the number of Catholics to the number of Sunnis would be more relevant.

True, but as far as I know it’s hard to define the exact number of Sunnis among Muslims, because of the tendency of putting all Muslim denominations into a one bag. It should be c. 75-90% of all Muslims, which seems to be comparable to the number of Catholics.

Fortunately, the most important and demographically accurate comparison (Muslims to Christians) is much more optimistic for us.

 

[Crow]

[snip]

Children are NOT burdens or accessories!

Children are the highest accomplishments of a married couple’s vocation.

 

[Kadaveri]

I think the Vatican is defining ‘Muslims’ as only referring to the orthodox Sunni Muslims here, since (as has been noted in this thread) that would be a more appropriate comparison than Muslims/Catholics. Also considering the numbers this makes much more sense, as there are about 1.3 billion Muslims worldwide, and 1.13 billion Catholics, so Muslims as a whole have outnumbered Catholics for ages. However if you take ‘Muslim’ as only referring to Sunnis (90% of Muslims) then you get a figure of 1.17 billion, which is only slightly higher than that of Catholics, and so it’s likely that Sunni Islam has only very recently overtaken Catholicism as the largest religious denomination in the world (and thus why the Catholic Church has just announced this now).

That being said, numbers don’t prove anything.

 

[iblessem]

“You need to know your faith. You cannot give what you do not have.” Fr. John Corapi SOLT

WOW! Like that quote! So true.

I’d humbly change one word, Jesus for Faith and you’d have:

“You need to know Jesus. You cannot share him if you don’t know him”