The future is Muslim, Mormon, and Catholic

Anglican Christmas church service, ten attend, eight with one foot in the grave.  Sermon is about the other foot dropping.

Catholic Christmas church service, approximately one hundred attend, most of them young.  Sermon is about Christmas being a time for children.

Some months ago I checked the graveyards.  To judge by the absence of angels, graveyards one hundred  percent protestant.

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2 Responses to “The future is Muslim, Mormon, and Catholic”

  1. Bill says:

    Not Catholic, rather traditionalist Catholic. I could take you to lots of parishes in the US occupied by a few blue-hairs and nobody else. The hierarchy in the US is sensitive to the impression created by these parishes, and they are closed down disproportionately. So the Catholic Church overall seems healthier than it is. You are right about the preaching, however. Catholic priests overall are quite pro-natalist.

    In Europe and the US, Catholics really don’t reproduce more than their atheist and Protestant fellows. All-Catholic Italy has a TFR around 1.4. But devout Catholics still have bigger families. Similarly, fundamentalist Protestants tend to have big families. So, I think it is Muslim, Mormon, and serious Christian.

    The open question is whether conversion out of serious Christianity will happen fast enough to offset our higher fertility. I’d bet on yes, but who knows.

    • jim says:

      My story was a single data point, so not necessarily representative – but who attends church on Christmas is more representative of actual believers than surveys that ask people their religion.

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