Originally posted by GraceSaves:
Some things to consider:
The Baptist Church is autonomous. The Catholic Church is universal. When I search anything for Baptist Church, I usually get hits on random specific congregations, rather than "Baptists" as a whole, which is not surprising considering each church is independant.
For that reason try leaving off the word "church" and using only "Baptist" in the search engine.
Let's be honest here: which churches get the most press (and as we know, almost all press is bad press these days?) The ones currently marked by scandal (ie, Catholic, Episcopal, etc). You're bound to find more negative perspectives on these churches.
With the Catholic Church especially, and it's anti-abortion stance, as well as its firm stand against homosexuality, many people in the liberal media have an agenda to demonize the Church. I am fully aware that the Baptist Church stands on the same ground, but the Baptist Church is not a visible organization, and one cannot attack "Baptists" because there is always the "autonomous" card that one can use in defense.
You mean to say that you have never heard of Bob Jones (BJU)in the press?
These numbers, for the most part, are North American statitics, no? Are you surprised in ANY loss of Church membership with the moral decay in this nation? I praise God for the good that have remained, and pray for the fallen.
No, not really. I looked at a number of sites that quoted statistics from Australia, the Netherlands, Scotland, England, and a few other countries. No, I am not surprised at the moral decay at all. You're right. It doesn't surprise me. What does, is the people that try to defend it.
Only 6% of all Catholics worldwide are in America. It's hardly fair to say that these statistics do or do not reflect globally.
If the decay in America is getting bad, then the decay in other countries is worse. America is the one nation that was founded on Judeo-Christian ehics. The moral law of the Old Testament became the basis of its judicial system. Can we expect third world Catholic nations rampant with corruption to have a higher standard in their religion than their American counterparts do?
What is the point of this argument anyway? That the Church with the most growth is the correct church? That is something that changes according to social patterns. Now that I think about it, what is the basis of this argument in the first place?
The origin and point of this argument is the continual and baseless statements made by certain Catholics on this board concerning the great influx of former Protestants coming back to the Catholic Church; the implication of which is the Protestant churches are all in trouble and declining while the Catholic Church is pulling members from all the Protestant churches and is as healthy as ever.
My message is "Put up or shut up."
I hear a lot of Catholic propaganda how so many Protestants are leaving the fold for Catholicism (all unsubsstantiated--except for one or two who have become apostate and Catholic apologists). They were probably never saved in the first place. But to infer or state that there are great numbers of Protestants leaving Protestant churches and going back to Catholicism is just a heap of lies, and I for one am tired of hearing it. I can post site after site that show just the opposite. Catholics are leaving the the Catholic church, in many places by the droves. The Catholic Church is in trouble; it is in decline. Some Catholics need to take off their blinders and their rose colored glasses and look at the real picture.
Lastly, I replicated your search, and by the 5-6 page, I began to run into predominantly invalid sites dealing with the topic at hand. That means 50-60 sites. Even if it went to 20 pages, that's only 200 sites out of the listed 119,000 I got on the search.
I think I could get more than 200. But even 200 sites can give a tremendous amount of information about the condition of the Catholic Church. It is not such a rosy picture as some would like to paint it.
DHK
