How many Catholics in the World - 'really'?

I was watching John Paul's funeral this morning and saw all those peoples from many nations, tribes and tongues with all those head's of state and kings of the earth... and (well a Bible verse came to mind).

The symbol for "waters" in the book of Revelation is defined as ...

And of course there is also a reference to all the "kings of the earth" in Rev 17 and 18.

Truly the papacy is a world wide church that has influence among the "Waters" and the "kings of the earth" (obvious to all at this time and for many centuries before this).

My question is - "How many Catholics" are there on the earth?

How does one get "counted" as a Catholic.

I have heard that - in Catholic countries where the "state religion" is Catholic - simply being born in a hospital affects the catholic "Census" because to get the "general" numbers they simply take the population count for those countries that are officially Catholic.

That means that millions of non-Catholics and non-Christians are "being counted as Catholic" in that "rough-ball world-census" number.

And in countries like America - if you are christened in a Catholic Church - you get counted. However - do you "remain counted" even if you later stop attending?? If you then become Agnostice/atheist or even join a non-Catholic church are you still in their Catholic "number" for world-wide Catholic membership count?? Does the "rough estimate" for the US Catholic count "stay the same" in terms of having "counted you"??. Do they have some vigilant workers constantly revising the numbers to keep them accurate for "Actual" Catholic membership in countries like America and non-Catholic countries in Europe?

This would mean that millions of Baptists, methodists, atheists etc in America are ALSO counted the general count for "number of Catholics in the world today".

As those of you know who have churches that practice believer's baptism - it is hard enough to "keep the books accurate" by constantly updating the records and distinguishing between the huge population of non-attending ex-memebers in a city or community and the actual number of attending members. That ratio can be has high as 10-to-1 in some communities. (And of course those "ex-members" may have gone on to other faiths or may have become atheist or ... so it is good to keep that number updated if you really want to know "how many Baptists there are in America" ).

So...does anybody know that the RCC actually has an "accurate" method of counting or are millions of Adventists, Baptists, Lutherans, Muslims, Agnostics, Atheists, Hindus world-wide being "counted" in that rough-guess "world-wide Catholic census" count?

In Christ,

Bob

 

Here is one interesting example for Bolivian Catholic numbers -

North America Numbers for the Catholic church
http://www.adherents.com/Na/Na_113.html

Catholic Church USA
http://www.adherents.com/Na/Na_125.html

World wide numbers
http://www.adherents.com/Na/Na_127.html
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By contrast here is the North America total for Adventists

http://www.adherents.com/Na/Na_575.html

Here is the world wide number

http://www.adherents.com/Na/Na_579.html

And an interesting note from 1998 about how they count them

It "appears" that these two very different methods of reporting numbers are all merged together.

For example - in churches that only count Baptized "Believers" (not every child or every non-attending ex-member) the numbers represent something "relatively close" to active believing participants.

But in churches that baptize infants and do not update records to show members that are no longer practicing (or believing).. the number may represent the total number of men women and children IN church and OUT of church that have ever been Christened.

It would be like asking the Baptist for the number of people that have ever passed through the doors VS the actual membership of believers.

Those would be too hugely different numbers.

To be consistent - we either have to conclude that the Christian population is really "about 3 billion" people who have ever been a member or a child of a member -- or we have to reduce our 2 billion number today back to something like 1 billion or less "actual practicing believing church members".

In Christ,

Bob

 

FYI - the Mormons do that but do not count "the dead" when they report membership numbers.

As a general rule - groups that do not Baptize infants are going to have numbers that reflect "believers" that attend rather than total church attendance infants-to-adults.

If an infant is registered with church-A -- who trakes it to determine that it never did attend church as an actual believer?

It "appears" that names get dropped from RC roles if a specific request is made. But a baptized infant whose family seldom attends and who then grows up to become a member of some other denomination -- may very well NOT report back to their "Christening church" state/city when they get saved.

In Christ,

Bob