Nevertheless, the report gives a snapshot of the numbers we need to put Anglicanorum coetibus in perspective.
Like mainline Protestants, Catholics appear to be declining both as a percentage of the population and in absolute numbers. The new survey indicates there are about 51 million Catholic adults in the U.S. today, roughly 3 million fewer than in 2007. But taking margins of error into account, the decline in the number of Catholic adults could be as modest as 1 million. And, unlike Protestants, who have been decreasing as a share of the U.S. public for several decades, the Catholic share of the population has been relatively stable over the long term, according to a variety of other surveys.As I pointed out two weeks ago, 66,000 baptized Christians became Catholic during 2013, not enough to compensate for the 1,000,000 to 3,000,000 Catholics who left the Church since 2007. (Of course, if we take the higher estimate, that means the Catholic Church lost the equivalent of three whole Episcopal Churches during that period.)
The contribution of Ordinariate receptions to counterbalancing these numbers since 2012 is, of course, of no statistical significance, and likely will never be. This raises for me once more the question of whether then-Fr Steenson, with then-Bishop Clarence Pope, gave then-Cardinal Ratzinger a misleading estimate of 250,000 Episcopalians who might come over to a US Ordinariate when they proposed the ides to him in 1993.
That's the sort of number that might be at the lower end of something worth a Holy Father's time. This other that we really see, not so much.
The Pew report notes that Christian dropouts are primarily young. I've heard many times in homilies that the family, in raising children within the Church, is the primary instrument of mission. Insofar as we've seen an overall decline in stable families, the decline in Christian affiliation can probably be traced in large part to this alone.
But a huggy-bear Papal public persona clearly hasn't reversed the actual numbers.
