On The Religious Demographic Horizon
The Vatican's 2008 yearbook of statistics has been released, and its figures are compelling, fascinating in the extreme. Telling anyone interested the state of the world's religions as far as future numbers are concerned. And the numbers for the future appear to be very concerning for the current leader of the Roman Catholic Church.For the Vatican, on the good news front, it would appear that the representative proportion of the world's population that is Catholic remains stable. That in and of itself should be a hopeful sign given the much-bemoaned fact of religion drop-outs and general disinterest leading to increasingly fewer opting to join the priesthood and the faithful declining in church attendance.
Monsignor Vittorio Formenti, assigned the task of compiling the yearbook data, claims that Muslims now represent upwards of 19.2 percent of the world's population, while Catholics come in at 17.4 percent. "For the first time in history, we are no longer at the top: the Muslims have overtaken us", Msgr. Formenti was quoted as announcing in L'Osservatore Romano.
However, taking into account all Christian groups, inclusive of Orthodox churches, Anglicans and Protestants, the number swelled to 33 percent of the world's population as it stood in 2006 - representing some two billion people. In terms of numbers, 1.13 billion Catholics, and an estimated 1.3 billion Muslims.
Worldwide, the two most expansionist religions - in terms of birth rates - were identified as Muslims and evangelical Christians. As for the rest, they were on an even keel, static, no growth. For an interesting perspective, consider that by 2045, it's thought that in Britain there will be more Muslims than Christians. Religious colonization by stealth and fecundity.
That is precisely the impact that is so worrying for Pope Benedict, seeing those figures as a future threat to the Western world's Christian heritage. It will take just about a decade before active Muslims are expected to expand in numbers beyond practising Roman Catholics, and Church of England worshippers similarly, within Europe.
According to Canadian census figures from 2001 released by Statistics Canada, Muslims make up a mere 2 percent of the population, while 43.2 percent of the population were Roman Catholic. It's a cradle race for population supremacy.
Labels: Religion, Social-Cultural Deviations, That's Life
posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, April 01, 2008
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