THE US Catholic parishes have had a significant growth in the last 10 years, according to a new study conducted by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate.
In 2000, just one-quarter of America’s parishes had more than 1,200 registered households. However, by 2010 that had grown to one-third. At the lower end, parishes with fewer than 200 registered households dropped from one-fourth of the nation’s total in 2000 to barely more than one in seven a decade later (24 percent to 15 percent), the National Catholic Reporter said quoting CARA.
The overall average size of parishes grew 36 percent, from 855 households in 2000 to 1,167 in 2010.
CARA, which is based at Georgetown University in Washington, reported its findings in the winter issue of its quarterly newsletter, The CARA Report.
Mary Gautier, editor of The CARA Report, said the average size of a U.S. Catholic household is the same as the national average, 2.6 persons per household. So a parish of 1, 167 registered households would have about 3,000 registered members.
The research agency also found that:
* The make-up of parishes is becoming younger: “The percentage of parishioners under the age of 40 increased from 41 percent in 2005 to 45 percent in 2010,” the report said.
* The median annual parish offering per household in 2010 was $468, but those in smaller parishes gave much more on average than those in the largest parishes.
The figures in the CARA report were among the findings it uncovered in the first phase of the most comprehensive study of US parish life since the landmark Notre Dame study in the 1980s, the NCR reported.
That phase, completed last year, consisted of a nationwide random sample survey of pastors or other leaders of 843 parishes. Its margin of sampling error was +/-3.3 percent.
The study found that in just the past five years the percentage of registered parishioners who are Hispanic grew by 4 percent, while the percentage of those who are non-Hispanic white dropped by 4 percent, narrowing the spread between those two largest Catholic groups by 8 percent.
In another church trends study reported in the same issue of the CARA report, Gray said US Catholics are likely to see an even steeper rate of decline in the number of active diocesan priests in the coming 25 years than they did in the past 25.
Unless the rate of new ordinations increases, he projected that there will only be 12,500 US diocesan priests in active ministry by the mid-2030s.
