Latinos Divorcing Catholicism?

Fantastic. Progress on all fronts.

This is encouraging, because it shows that cultural influences can drive people to become more moderate and enlightened in their religious beliefs.

ummm..

This looks encouraging. It’s great to see that people are moving away from religion. I hope that people from various groups realize that religion does not necessarily have to be a part of their identity and that secular life offers great benefits. Maybe living in a country with people of many different religions and ideas of secularism makes people realize that the dogmatic ways of their Church don’t match up with the real world.

It does seem that, although the percentage of Catholics has decreased, the actual number seems to have increased from 9.6 million to 18.3 million. Still, the percentages are encouraging and maybe this will make the Church realize that they can’t just act any which way they want and still expect their members to stay.

From the article:

“The biggest challenge the Catholic Church faces is the movement of Latino people not to other religions but rather to a secular way of life in which religion is no longer very important,” he [Allan Figueroa Deck, a Catholic priest and executive director of the Secretariat of Cultural Diversity in the Church, a program of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops] says. “We really need to ask ourselves why that is and what response the church can develop for this challenge.”

As usual, the Church is afraid of secularism. I don’t understand how the Church can expect to look like a better alternative to secular life given its various problems. Their “response” to secularism too often seems very negative and discriminatory.

All the best to those who have left the Church!
-Sharmin

I think it’s awful that you would consider this as a sign of assimilation. There’s no connection and you didn’t prove one. People find atheism through their own journey.

When I was at the AAIC 2009 one of the speakers said that when latinos come the US they see their traditions challenged by a new way of life. Among those traditions was religion, so this makes pretty much sense. Hopefully the number of hispanic non-believers keeps growing. We breed pretty fast.

Muy bueno. Perder sus dioses y establecer su mente libre.

This is one possible reading, albeit one that strikes me (an atheist Puerto Rican) as seriously condescending. I usually enjoy the things you blog, but um:

Of course, there is no data here showing how much of the (actually quadruple, in population terms) increase in “non-religiousness” is attributable to freshly-arrived immigrants versus long-term transplants versus U.S.-born Latinos. No data that indicates on what soil the conversion (if any) is taking place. No margin of error correcting for any of the factors which leave Latinos particularly underreported in the U.S. census (issues of language proficiency, legal status, doubts about the census’ efficacy or purpose, etc).

Perhaps most importantly, and as Hrag points out, there is no information which would indicate how the very personal process of moving away from religion is taking place. Having been raised in a (Protestant) Christian tradition, I certainly do not conceive of my own decision to identify as an atheist as “assimilation” and can scarcely believe that someone who doesn’t even know me could have the gall to blanketly describe it as such. Couching this trend in terms like assimilation and “enlightenment” cuts eerily close to the patronizing language the Spaniards used in their justification for dominating the belief systems my indigenous and African ancestors.

It’s tacky, off-the-mark, not especially “friendly,” and not appreciated.