Drop in number of U.S. Catholics offset by new immigrants, study says

Published: 2008-02-26

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- According to a new study on the religious affiliation of U.S. adults, 28 percent of Americans have either changed religious affiliations or claim no formal religion at all. The study also shows the Catholic Church has been hardest hit by these shifts, but that the influx of Catholic immigrants has offset the loss. So, the percentage of the adult population that identifies itself as Catholic has held fairly steady at around 25 percent, it says. The 148-page study, "U.S. Religious Landscape Survey," was conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life and based on interviews with 35,000 adults last year. Its findings, released Feb. 25, show that roughly 10 percent of all Americans are former Catholics. Almost half of these former Catholics joined Protestant denominations, while about half do not have a religious affiliation and a small percentage chose other faiths. "If everyone raised Catholic stayed (with their religious affiliation), Catholics would be one-third of the population," said John Green, a senior research fellow and a principal author of the study. The margin of error for the total sample surveyed is plus or minus 0.6 percentage points.

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