Catholics account for nearly one-quarter of U.S. adults. By comparison, more than half (51.3%) of the adult population is Protestant and almost one-in-six (16.1%) are unaffiliated with any particular religion. The proportion of the U.S. population that identifies itself as Catholic has remained relatively stable in recent decades, but this apparent stability obscures the major changes that are taking place within American Catholicism.
No other major faith in the U.S. has experienced greater net losses over the last few decades as a result of changes in religious affiliation than the Catholic Church. Nearly one-third (31.4%) of U.S. adults say they were raised Catholic. Today, however, only 23.9% of adults say they are affiliated with the Catholic Church, a net loss of 7.5 percentage points. Overall, roughly one-third of those who were raised Catholic have left the church, and approximately one-in-ten American adults are former Catholics.
Impact of the Growing Latino Population
At the same time, findings from the General Social Survey, conducted between 1972 and 2006 by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, have shown that the proportion of the population identifying as Catholic has remained relatively stable, at around 25%, over the last 30 years. During the same period, the Protestant share of the population has steadily declined, and the proportion of the population that is religiously unaffiliated has increased significantly. Why has the Catholic share of the U.S. population held steady even though so many people have left the Catholic Church ?
Part of the answer is that the Catholic Church continues to attract a fair number of converts. Another factor is immigration : the Landscape Survey finds that nearly half of all immigrants to the U.S. (46%) are Catholic, compared with just 21% of the native-born population.
The vast majority (82%) of Catholic immigrants to the U.S. were born in Latin America, and most Catholic immigrants from Latin America (52% of all Catholic immigrants to the U.S.) come from just one country - Mexico. Catholics are also well represented among immigrants coming to the U.S. from Western Europe, Eastern Europe and East Asia ; more than one-in-four of all immigrants from these regions are Catholic.
Recent demographic analyses conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center indicate that the Latino share of the U.S. population will grow significantly in the coming decades. Indeed, there are likely to be nearly 130 million Latinos in the U.S. by the year 2050 - more than three times the size of the Latino population in 2005 (42 million). These estimates project that Latinos will account for 29% of the U.S. population by 2050, up from 14% in 2005.
Latino Catholics are helping to reshape the Catholic Church in the U.S. not only through their sheer numbers but also through their distinctive forms of worship. More than half (54%) of Hispanic Catholics identify themselves as charismatics, compared with only 12% of white, non-Hispanic Catholics. Masses attended by Latino Catholics often exhibit the kind of exuberant atmosphere that is more characteristic of Pentecostalism or other forms of charismatic or renewalist Christianity than of traditional American Catholicism. Charismatic Christians place a special emphasis on divine healings, direct revelations from God, exorcisms and other signs of God’s ongoing, day-to-day intervention in human affairs.
It is important to point out that the adoption of some key features of pentecostal or charismatic Christianity by Hispanic Catholics does not appear to be undermining their commitment to Catholicism. Large percentages of all Latino Catholics - charismatics and non-charismatics alike - embrace the church’s traditional beliefs and practices.
Catholics and politics
Despite the Catholic Church’s strong opposition to abortion, a slim majority (51%) of Catholics believe that abortion should be legal in most or all cases, while 44% oppose abortion in most or all cases. This breakdown is nearly identical to the views of the public as a whole.
There are significant divisions among Catholics on the role of government. Most notably, Hispanic Catholics are much more supportive of an active government - 77% express support for a bigger government that provides more services - than are white, non-Latino Catholics (36%).
The ideological portrait of Catholics is similar to that of the population as a whole. More than four-in-ten Catholics (44%) describe themselves as politically moderate, about a third (34%) say they are politically conservative and less than one-in-five (18%) describe themselves as politically liberal. Latino Catholics are noticeably more Democratic than are their white, non-Latino counterparts, with more than half (55%) of Latino Catholic registered voters identifying with the Democratic Party.
In recent presidential elections Catholics have tended to split their vote roughly evenly between Republican and Democratic candidates. In 2000, Al Gore and George Bush nearly split the Catholic vote (50% to 47%, respectively). In 2004, Bush beat John Kerry among Catholics, but by a relatively narrow margin (52% to 47%).
White Catholics have been more supportive of Republicans in recent elections than have Latino Catholics, with Bush enjoying a seven-point margin of victory among white Catholics in 2000 and a 13-point margin of victory among this group in 2004. Despite the inroads that Bush made between 2000 and 2004 among Hispanic Protestants, his support among Hispanic Catholics was identical in both elections. In both 2000 and 2004, one-third of Latino Catholic voters supported Bush, with large majorities opting instead for his Democratic opponent. The sheer size of the Catholic population alone guarantees that Catholic groups will continue to play an important electoral role in 2008.
