Latino Catholics

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Plug-In: Losing their religion -- shape of Latino Catholic population keeps changing in America

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Plug-In: Losing their religion -- shape of Latino Catholic population keeps changing in America

LANCASTER, Pa. — Greetings from Amish country.

I wrote this while in Pennsylvania for the Evangelical Press Association’s 2023 Christian Media Convention.

Let’s check out the best reads and top headlines in the world of faith.

What to know: The big story

A declining demographic: Once upon a time in America, the phrase “Latino Catholic” seemed almost superfluous.

However, new research released this week details just how much that has changed.

The Wall Street Journal’s Francis X. Rocca reports:

The study by the Pew Research Center found that the percentage of Catholic Latinos fell to 43% in 2022 from 67% in 2010. The share of evangelical Protestants among U.S. Latinos remained relatively stable at 15%, compared with 12%. But the proportion of Latinos with no religious affiliation is now up to 30% from 10%, bringing it to about the same level as that of the U.S. population as a whole.

The tendency to identify as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” is especially strong among young Latinos, as with young Americans in general. About half of U.S. Latinos ages 18 to 29 identify themselves that way.

Crux’s John Lavenburg notes:

Even with the decreases, Latinos are about twice as likely as U.S. adults overall to identify as Catholic. However, the data within that 43 percent shows the potential impacts of a secularized U.S. culture on Latino Catholics, and paints a bleak picture for the future if the trends continue.

Political angle: The Washington Times’ Mark A. Kellner suggests that evangelical Hispanics — despite “relatively stable” numbers — have a rising profile:

This is due in part, the research group said, to the political activism of some evangelical churches, but also because “a rising share of Latino voters” have cast their ballots for Republican candidates in recent elections.

Religion News Service’s Alejandra Molina cites “the clergy sexual abuse scandal, a lack of LGBTQ inclusivity and the rule that women can’t be priests” as reasons Latinos are leaving the Catholic Church.


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Outspoken but quiet, conservative but progressive: Media profile U.S. Catholic bishops' Latino leader

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Here’s a surefire way to make headlines: Do something significant — and this part is crucial — do it for the first time.

Such was the case with this week’s election of Archbishop José H. Gomez of Los Angeles as U.S. Catholic bishops’ first Latino leader.

Prominent religion writers — including the New York Times’ Elizabeth Dias, the Washington Post’s Julie Zauzmer and Religion News Service’s Jack Jenkins — were on the scene for the milestone vote. It helps, of course, that the bishops met in Baltimore, an easy drive or train ride from those journalists’ base in Washington, D.C., and New York City.

Other familiar names — The Associated Press’ David Crary, the Wall Street Journal’s Ian Lovett and the Los Angeles Times’ Sarah Parvini — covered the news remotely (Crary from New York and Lovett and Parvini from Los Angeles). The WSJ piece was more of a brief (four short paragraphs), but the financial newspaper at least acknowledged Gomez’s election.

Before analyzing all the coverage, I’ll note that I first became familiar with Gomez when he became archbishop of San Antonio in 2005. Based in Dallas, I covered religion for AP at the time. So I traveled to San Antonio to meet Gomez and do a story on him stepping into a new role as the leading Hispanic cleric in the U.S.

I remember him being friendly but not overly talkative. These were my favorite two paragraphs of the piece that I wrote for AP’s national wire:

Gomez showed that sense of humor as he recalled how he started attending daily Mass as a high school student in Monterrey. A sign of a future archbishop’s deep commitment to the church? Perhaps. But it was also a good way to get the car keys.

“The only way that my dad let me drive was to go to Mass,” Gomez said with a chuckle.

I noticed a few common themes in this week’s stories.


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Big news stories lurk on both sides of shrinking middle ground in American religion

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Big news stories lurk on both sides of shrinking middle ground in American religion

Religion and politics. Religion and politics. Religion and politics.

Or, sometimes it’s politics and religion.

Either way, we all know what factor — more often than not — turns a religion-news story into a big news story in the eyes of most newsroom managers. Well, sex scandals are good, too.

Normally, this politics-and-religion reality bugs me, because there is so much more to the religion beat than whatever content happens to overlap with the current political headlines.

But, right now, I think it’s obvious that the biggest news story in American politics is directly linked to the biggest story in American religion. I am talking about a trend that has been discussed in several 2019 Crossroads podcasts — including this week’s edition (click here to tune that in).

It’s the growing polarization between the world of traditional religious believers (defined primarily in terms of the PRACTICE of their faith) and the growing flock of open atheists-agnostics and the spiritual-but-not-religious phenomenon that overlaps with the growth of the religiously unaffiliated. It lines up with the hotter-than-hades rift in American culture and politics.

There are so many stories linked to this. We’re talking about the demographic implosion of the old liberal Protestant mainline. Then there’s the surging number of independent churches and nondenominational believers. There’s a growing number of Americans — small, but important — in other world religions. There are people (like me) who grew up in one tradition (Southern Baptist, in this case) and converted to another (Eastern Orthodoxy).

There are so many numbers, so many polls. The Pew Research Center, LifeWay Research, Barna and others keep cracking out fascinating numbers.

In the podcast, I mentioned — once again — Donald Trump and the infamous “81% of white evangelicals just love Donald” theme that can be found in news coverage on a daily basis (or so it seems). Yes, about half of those white evangelicals wanted to vote to some other GOP candidate. And about 40% of evangelicals appear to have stayed home or some voted third party.

Out of all of the topics that floated into this week’s podcast, let me stress one — the changing religious world of Latino Americans. Consider this lede atop a recent Crux report:


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When reporting on tragic trends in Latin America, don't leave out Catholics and Pentecostals

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The headline drew me instantly: “Latin America is the murder capital of the world.”

Appearing in the Wall Street Journal (which, being behind a paywall, is not accessible to non-subscribers so I’ll cut and paste what I can), the piece said the entire continent is in a crisis mode because of the non-stop murders that happen nearly everywhere.

With only a few exceptions (Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba), it’s become a horrible place to live and a risky place to visit. The question, of course, is how religion fits into this picture, in terms of the history of the region, as well as life there right now.

The piece begins with a description of how Acapulco, once the vacation spot for the rich and famous, has become a a sharpshooter’s gallery.

Acapulco’s days as a tourist resort with a touch of Hollywood glamour seem long ago. In a city of 800,000, 953 people were violently killed last year, more than in Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Portugal and the Netherlands put together.

It’s not just Mexico. There is a murder crisis across much of Latin America and the Caribbean, which today is the world’s most violent region. Every day, more than 400 people are murdered there, a yearly tally of about 145,000 dead.

With just 8% of the world’s population, Latin America accounts for roughly a third of global murders. It is also the only region where lethal violence has grown steadily since 2000, according to United Nations figures.

Nearly one in every four murders around the world takes place in just four countries: Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico and Colombia. Last year, a record 63,808 people were murdered in Brazil. Mexico also set a record at 31,174, with murders so far this year up another 20%.

The 2016 tally in China, according to the U.N.: 8,634. For the entire European Union: 5,351. The United States: 17,250.

I guess there are SOME advantages in China being a police state. It does keep the murders down, although God only knows what really goes on in prisons and prison camps in that country where people disappear and never return.

In this story, everyone gets to die, starting with elementary school-aged kids to surgeons who botched a plastic surgery operation on a drug lord. The latter were found encased in cement.


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