Fifty-one million. That was roughly the number of Catholics in the US last year, according to a mass survey by Pew suggesting one in five Americans was a member of the Catholic church.
This makes Catholicism the second most popular religion in the US after evangelical protestantism. And the US is home to about 4% of the world’s Catholic population.
The impact of Catholicism in US public life isn’t limited to those practising the faith. The Catholic religion is in fact strongly connected with 45% of Americans, according to separate Pew figures.
On top of the 20% that identify as Catholic, there are 9% that have converted away from Catholicism, and a further 9% are what Pew describes as “cultural Catholics” – people whose religion is not Catholic but nevertheless consider themselves Catholic or partially Catholic in some other way. The remaining 8% are those who have a “meaningful” connection to Catholicism, perhaps through a relative or their partner.
Although Pope Francis’s church has an impact on many lives, Catholic teachings may not be sinking through completely into its modern incarnation in the US. For example, the majority of US Catholics do not think it is a sin to use contraceptives or live with a romantic partner outside marriage, while almost half (49%) think it is not sinful to remarry after divorcing without an annulment (a declaration stating a marriage never existed in the eyes of the church).
When it comes to homosexuality, those who think engaging in it is definitely sinful are not in the majority either – while 44% do believe it is a sin, 39% do not and 17% are unsure. Even more curiously, 46% think that the Catholic church should recognise same-sex marriage.
However, it is worth noting that these overall numbers differ considerably when the views of Catholics who attend mass weekly are compared with those who do not. Fifty-nine percent of those who regularly go to a church service think homosexual behaviour is a sin while the same is only true of 35% among those who attend mass less often.
Despite the relatively steady number of those of Catholic faith in the US, the number of priests working in the church has declined considerably over the past few decades, according to figures from the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate.
In 1970 there were 59,192 Catholic priests in the US, but by last year that figure had dropped to 38,275. Over the course of the same 44 years the number of parishes without a resident pastor increased from 571 to 3,496.
However, the number of graduate-level seminarians (priests in training) has remained stable at 494 a year in 2014, up from 442 in 2000 (the lowest on record).
Methodology:
Two separate Pew surveys were referenced for this post. The first was the Religious landscape study from 2014, with a sample size of 35,071 Americans interviewed by telephone between 4 June and 30 Sept 2014. The second was study from this year featuring a sample size of 5,122 Americans interviewed by telephone.