All Politics, Evangelization, And Pastoral Care Is Local

OK. Here, finally is the demographic portions US Catholic Family Study that came out earlier this summer. Most parish leaders and anyone focusing on the evangelization of children, teens, or families as a whole need to crunch these numbers. Some thought-provoking findings:

1) “Among U.S. adult Catholics starting families in the twentieth century, those of the Lost (born 1883 to 1900), G.I. (born 1901 to 1924), and Silent (born 1925 to 1942) generations were more likely to have five or more children in their lifetimes than to have no children at all.”

2) As of 2014, 67 percent of Millennial adult Catholics had no children and only 30 percent had married.

3) The median age of respondent parents was 37 (in other words, half were 37 or under, and half are 37 or older). So later Gen Xers and the older millennials. They came of age under Benedict and Francis.

4) 79% of Catholic parents are married and 23% of married Catholic parents attend Mass weekly.

5) Sixty-five percent of Catholic parents in the South are Hispanic as are 81 percent in the West, compared to 18 percent of parents in the Northeast and Midwest. 54% of Catholic parents nationally are Hispanic or Latino.
Hispanic parents are less likely to be married and less likely to send them children to any kind of religious education or Catholic school and 29% are living at or below the poverty line.

Sherry’s observation: All politics, evangelization, and pastoral care is local.