Catholics an Easy First.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 16, 17 April 1902, Page 1

Catholics an Easy First.

One of the surest signs of decaying vitality in any religion is to be found in the falling off in the attendances at its regular services, and, tried by this test, the Protestant sects appear to be in a very bad way indeed. The decline in Church-going among Protestants in recent years has been rapid, continuous, and universal— alike in Germany and in America, in England and in Australia, Protestant Churches have the same woful tale to tell of the ever-increasing number of empty benches and vacant pews. Even in Scotland, where the people were, a generation ago, almost universally religious, and where Presbyterianism was so strongly entrenched there now exists a most deplorable state of things. The Rev. Dr. Howie, of Govan, who is declared by the Edinburgh correspondent of the Otago Daily Times to be the greatest living authority on the subject of Church attendance in Scotland, recently submitted to the Free Church Assembly some statistics he had gathered, and, according to the Daily Times, these figures ' showed as their net result that there is in Scotland to-day a churchless population of 1,000,000, or 37 per cent, of the whole population. 1 Nor is this state of things confined to the grown-up people. Sunday school statistics show that the children are following only too faithfully in their elders' footsteps. Thus, according to the figures of Sunday school attendance recently published in the London Christian World the Sunday schools of the Established Church have a decreased attendance of 7000 scholars, the Wesleyan of 4500, the Baptist of 7000, the Calvinistic Methodists of 4200, and the United Methodists of 3000. The same dismal leakage amongst the children is apparently going on, on quite as large a scale proportionately, in the Protestant Sunday schools of this Colony. Only the other da.y the Rev. C. H. Laws in presenting the Sunday Schools' Report at the Wesleyan Conference in Dunedin had to point out to the Conference the extreme gravity of the condition into which their Sunday school work had now drifted. ' It will be at once noticed,' he said, ' that we have again to report decreases in almost every column. An occasional decrease may be accounted for by extraordinary circumstances, and may be nominal lather than real, but such a steady decrease, year by year, as our returns have shown can only be set down as ominous, and I cannot conceive of any way in which this conference could better serve the Church in this Colony than by patiently and thoroughly going into this matter. I find that the total decrease in scholars for the past 12 months has been 1024, or nearly 5 per cent., while the decrease in teachers has been 3^ per cent. 1 And there is every reason to believe that what is taking place amongst the Wesleyans is taking place, to a great or less extent, amongst all the other Protestant sects.

In marked contrast to all this is the steady and robust vitality of the Catholic Church as everywhere shown by church attendance statistics, even when the enumeration is made by Protestants. In the United States, for example, the members of the Catholic body are, in the matter of regular church

attendance, an easy first. A Protestant authority, Mr. Reni Bache, who is described as a 'a well-known newspaperman and grandson of Benjamin Franklin,' has made an elaborate compilation of statistics on the subject, and this is what he gives as the result of his investigation :: — ■ ' Nearly one-third of the churchgoers of the United States are Roman Catholics. Considerably more than one-fifth are Methodists. More than one-sixth are Baptists. One churchgoer in sixteen is a Presbyterian, and one in seventeen a Lutheran. One in thirty-nine is an Episcopalian, and one in thirty-nine a Congregationalism The balance of the churchgoing people is split up into minor sects. New Mexico is almost wholly Roman Catholic; Arizona is three-quarters Catholic; Connecticut, Colorado, and California are half Catholic. Methodists are strongest in Delaware, South California, and Florida, numbering fifty per cent, of the churchgoers. Baptists are more numerous in Mississippi, Georgia, and Virginia, claiming fifty per cent, and upwards in those States. Twelve in every thirteen religious people in Utah prefer the Mormon faith; two in three are Mormons in Idaho, and one in eleven in Nevada. Catholic New Mexico is the most pious section of the Union, with sixty-eight per cent, of its population church communicants. Utah comes next with sixtytwo per cent., for Mormons are first-rate churchgoers. Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut are high up on the list with over forty per cent. ; but Vermont falls much below, and New Hampshire has a record of only twenty-seven per cent. Maine drops below twenty-five per cent. The really heathen States, however, are those of the far West, where the percentage of churchgoers drops off to a lamentably small fraction.'

It thus appears that of the whole of the churchgoers in the United States Catholics number no less than one-third, all the other religious bodies being far behind. And this in a country which, according to Protestant pulpit orators in Dunedin, 'stands for Protestantism.'

It is gratifying to find that, according to the latest statistics, the Church maintains in the Australasian colonies the same proud pre-eminence in church attendance which she has acquired in other lands. The Government statistician of New South Wales has furnished an official return on the subject, which is published in the Sydney Morning Herald of the 22nd March last. The following are the official figures : —

It is a case once again of c Catholics first, the rest nowhere ' the number of habitual attendants at Sunday services amongst Catholics bring 123 605, or one third as many apiin as the Church of Englmd, hrflf_as rn,my again as the Methodists, nearly five times as many as the Presbyterians, more than seven times as many as tl,e sa!v jtion Arm)', ten times as many

as the Congregational ists, and nearly eighteen times as many as the Bapusts. It ls a record which speaks for itself and $$«%£s aZ*sstyr yt ° the vi^ andendurin s-

Denomination. ! I I I I en o O 03 o P-l j-i £ >- o H o s 3 o o <3 Actemiati Persons ■\ears am j ice of of 14 i over. S C bo a. c o a a; S S be <B ot-i 03 C I O I Church oP England ... ...j "73 K oman Catholic ... ...' 334 Presbyterian ... ... ..., ]S4 Cong-relational. . .. ...' 5J .Methodist ... ... ...I 177 Baptist .. ... ... 37 Army ... .. ' 100 |Other Denominations ... ... 11 7..5)! 527 312 77 41| 411 80S to 2-'"> :3t., 1 fi27! BDB| 117 1.151 117 34 1' 85 140,362 132.574 50 73 (j 24.150 12(1.137 14 320 43.500 1.5 1)75 95.8421 27.01)1) 12 121) 7 .180 17.811 5.8431 10,122 80 1,01)6 536 13 711) 340 70,6-1-8; 87.867 26,177 11,013; 48,001)! T,SOi>, 3,043 8,414 Total — A.II Denominations' 1,337 2 il'J ?>.] IS' ."> 5152 .-){i;.(i:i4 37r>(; ( .ii 2fi,44(il 2C3.R80