Where Have All The Catholics Gone?

Where have all the Catholics gone? There are the popular Churches of what’s Happening now that is non-denominational and do not even refer to any type of scripture that is more motivational speaking than scripture teaching. Trump’s ban on Mexicans and now on people from Venezuela is going to effect the Catholic bottom line of income. He Catholic Church is even losing ground in Latin America. If the Church loses the Hispanic votes and loyalty who can they count on? Latinos were always the most religious followers of Jesus.

In just one generation Latin America has seen the number of people who identify themselves as Catholics plummet a new report shows. The shift is dramatic for a religion long one of the bastions of Catholicism in the world. With more than 425 million Catholics, Latin America accounts for nearly 40% of the global Catholic population. Through the 1960’s at least 90% of Latin Americans were Catholic and 84%of people surveyed recently by the Pew Research Center said they were raised Catholic.

Recent reports found that only 69% of  Latin Americans still consider themselves Catholic, with more people switching to more conservative Protestant churches (19%) or describing themselves as agnostic or religiously unaffiliated (8%). More and more non-denominational places of worship are popping up everywhere passing full collection plates filled with young people just looking for a place of peace and tranquility that is hard to find anywhere else on earth these days.

Even when the new Pope from Argentina was elected there was still conflicting feelings in Latin America. The new survey finds that people who are currently Catholic overwhelmingly view Francis favorably but former Catholics are more skeptical. The Catholic religious rules have changed so much in the past 40 years. Now with only a fee married couples with children can simply annul a marriage like it never existed. Eating meat is ok on Good Friday, married Deacons are able to conduct most of the church service and now if you are gluten-free they say just don’t receive Holy Communion. We even have two living Popes now that never existed in the history of Popedom!

People give a variety of reasons for abandoning the Catholic Church, the most common being that they wanted a more personal connection with God. The scandals of Priest Pedophilia does not help the reputations of the clergy who still do not value the contributions of the nuns and who do not accept women into the Priesthood. It was the free without pay devotion of the nuns commitments to raising children in the Catholic schools gave Catholicism a good reputation and kept costs down. Now nuns are living in poverty unsupported by the church and Catholic schools   are closing rapidly. The Church must pay for costly legal fees and settlements for their boy grabbing sexual predator Priests. Not good!

The survey conducted 30,000 face-to-face interviews in 18 countries. People are still very religious and hopeful or thankful and look to the blue sky and Beg God or Thank God daily because we have too much worry in our lives and need a celestial force to guide us throughout our daily lives and days. Even after sex we say Oh God that was good. Sigh! Just somehow keep your God in your life because there is still much about life that is unexplained so we need that 4^th dimensional force in our lives to guide us throughout the day.