| A STEADY decline in the number of Roman Catholics born and baptised into the faith in England and Wales is linked to a Church that is facing declining or static income and increased expenditure, in the first statistical analysis of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales to use financial data publicly available through the Charity Commission.
The Digest of Statistics of the Catholic Community of England and Wales, 1958 to 2005, published by the independent Pastoral Research Centre Trust, contrasts with recent reports that seemed to show Roman Catholic numbers surging ahead, largely because of immigration from Roman Catholic areas of Europe.
Roman Catholic bishops were reported as saying that the RC population had risen by 20 per cent in the 47 years up to 2005.
But Anthony Spencer, the editor of the Digest, has used a variety of sources — including the national Catholic Directory the Annuario Pontificio, the statistical yearbook of the Church; and the accounts of the RC Church’s 22 diocesan trusts on the Charity Commission website — to check and correlate the record.
Mr Spencer, who ran the Newman Demographic Survey in the 1950s, said in his report, launched this week, that the Digest was needed because the Church’s statistical system virtually collapsed after 1992.
He found that, far from increasing, the numbers of Roman Catholics show a decline over the past half-century from just over five million to under four million.
In 1959, there was a total of 5,040,000 “four-wheeler Catholics”, i.e. those who came to church at least three times in their life: in their pram, in their wedding car, and in their hearse. But, by 2005, this number had dropped to 3,919,000.
Also in 1959, births and infant baptisms added 81,000 new members to the RC Church, but, by 1980, numbers had dropped to 27,500. By 1999, the number of births to RC families was fewer than the number of deaths.
By 2005, the number of children under the age of one being baptised had dropped to 42,525, the lowest number recorded since 1958, when 108,996 babies were baptised
In 2005, there were 20,141 late baptisms of children aged between one and 13. This was similar to previous years, but these numbers now made up a growing proportion of all baptisms. Mr Spencer linked the growth to parents who wished their children to be baptised so that they would be eligible for a Roman Catholic school.
“Late baptisms represented only six per cent of the total entry in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but the proportion rose rapidly in the 1970s — a rise associated with competition for places in Catholic schools.”
Reception into the Church from other Churches, such as the Church of England, had been running at 13,788 in 1959, but that had dropped to about 4000 a year since the new millennium. In 2005, there were 1533 males and 2411 females over the age of 14 received into the RC Church.
In the same period, the total number of marriages with RC rites that took place, either between Roman Catholics or between a Roman Catholic and a member of another Church, dropped from 45,150 to 10,924 in 2005. Of those, 7161 were inter-Church marriages.
Mass attendance was down by half, from 1,889,000 in 1960, to 942,000 in 2005. Confirmations fell by 65 per cent, but first communions were down by only 36 per cent. It seems that, for many children, their first communion may also be their last.
There was a steady decline in the number of priests to serve the Roman Catholic population and to say mass in the 3465 parish churches and chapels. By 2005, there were 3451 parish priests, who were assisted in their work by 6884 full- and part-time pastoral assistants, 42,136 catechists, and 624 permanent deacons.
Administration costs have been rising steadily each year. In 2005, Westminster archdiocese expended a total of £19.6 million on all aspects of its work, while its income from collections, donations, and legacies dropped from £20.1 million to £19.8 million. Other dioceses also showed a drop in income.
The Westminster province’s income stood at £57 million in 2005, down more than £1 million from its 2004 figure. The income of Birmingham province of £32.2 million was up on the previous year, £32.1 million, but down on the year before.
In Liverpool, which had made more data available, income was down from £16.4 million in 1999 to £13.7 million in 2005.
The Charities Aid Foundation’s annual publication on charitable giving, Charity Trends 2007, were also analysed the diocesan trusts. It found that two Roman Catholic diocesan trusts had lost their place in the top 500 fund-raising charities, and the remaining diocesan trusts had seen their voluntary income fall by more than ten per cent.
Legacy income received by the trusts was also down by 9.3 per cent. A diocesan trust receives the income of all the RC parishes in the diocese. Diocesan finance administrators said that there were “generational issues” in areas such as the North-West, where churches were closing. “The reduction in the number of parish priests, with fewer masses, has led to less income,” an administrator from the diocese of Portsmouth said.
|
back to News
previous story
|
next story 
.gif "Caris Magazine for girls aged 11 to 16 © site")