CATHOLIC POPULATION IN THE UNITED STATES

New Zealand Tablet, 28 August 1919, Page 19

CATHOLIC POPULATION IN THE UNITED STATES

There are 17,549,324 Catholics in the 48 States of the Union, according to the 1919 edition of The Official Catholic Directory, published and. copyrighted by P. J. Kenedy and Sons, of Barclay Street, New York. With 54 archdioceses and dioceses making no changes in their population statistics, with nine dioceses showing decreases and with 39 archdioceses and dioceses showing increases, the net increase, in the number of Catholics over the preceding year ; amounts to 133,021. Although this is the smallest increase shown in many a year, there is no cause for alarm, for, according to the tables of the 1919 issue, 54 important archdioceses and dioceses made no changes whatever in their population figures. This, does not mean that the archdioceses and dioceses in question have been at a standstill, but simply indicates that no new census was taken during the unsettled ' conditions brought about by the great world war. In fact, it is pointed out that some of the most important archdioceses have not changed their figures in quite a number of years. The Catholic population figures are not, therefore, as Protestant statisticians sometimes intimate, overestimated or exaggerated, but on the contrary, according to Joseph H. Meier, who has compiled the Directory for the past 14 years, the figure 17,549,324 (seventeen million five hundred and forty-nine thousand three hundred and twenty- is very conservative, and if the “floating” Catholic population could be recorded and if it had been possible for every diocese in the'eountry to take a new census, the Catholic population figure would, according to Mr. Meier, be over 19,500,000. During the last 25 years the Church in this country has made giant strides, as is evidenced by comparing the : figures in former Directories. Tracing back the population figure 25 years, it is shown that the increase in the number of Catholics in the United States during the past quarter of a century has amounted to 8,471,459.

The 1919 edition of. The Official Catholic Directory, which is now in the hands of the binder, appears later than. did. any volume during the last 15 years, but the publishers. assert • that conditions were very much upset and the. continual-shifting of help spelled continual delay. This, in addition to the one hundred and a one other .obstacles, delayed the publication beyond all precedent. Adding to -the figure 17,549,324, which is the Catholic population of the United States proper, the number of -Catholics ,in Alaska, the. Canal Zone, the Virgin Islands, Guam, the United States possessions in Samoa, the ; Hawaiian .Islands, Porto Rico, and in the Philippines, it ; develops that there are 26,332,650 Catholics under . the protection of the United- States flag. ... .. ' .. -, , . The usual table of - statistics ,appears in the Kenedy publication, and, according to the General Summary of the 1.919 issue there-are, now 20,588 Catholic priests in the 'United/ States. /Of these, 15,052 are secular : clergymen and 5.536 are priests of religious orders,

Other figures taken from the copyrighted summary are as follows: —Archbishops 14, bishops 97, churches with resident priests 10,460, missions with churches' 5537,. seminaries 110, seminarians 7865, parishes with schools 5788, children attending parochial schools! 1,633,599, orphan asylums 294, orphans 43,069, homes for aged 116, colleges for boys 215, academies for girls 674. ... • -- >

iSpecial attention is , called to the pictorial section in the 1919 issue. The compilers have secured and published likenesses of all the archbishops and bishops who were appointed to American Sees up to a few weeks previously. The pictorial section consists of 32 pages, an unusually 3 - large number. Another feature of the 1919 edition is the complete list of army and navy chaplains, which takes up six pages in the Kenedy publication. The 762 secular clergy and the 264 members of religious Orders who were serving under the Stars and Stripes are listed in the army and navy section. ''

According to the new issue of Kenedy’s Official Catholic Director}/, 28 States have a Catholic population of 100,000. or over, the 28 "Banner” States being as follows; —•

1—New York 3,089,266 2 —Pennsylvania 1,867,000 3 : Illinois 1,481,789 4Massachusetts ... 1,406,845 5—Ohio 866,715 6New Jersey 746,319 7Michigan 631,508 8Louisiana ... ... 618,869 9—Wisconsin 592,233 —California 589,000 11— Missouri 538,692 12— Connection t ... 523,795 1—Minnesota 483,494 14 —Texas ... ... ... 455,339 15 Maryland, including District of of Columbia 278,406 16—Indiana ... ... ... 275,914 17—Rhode Island 275,000 18Iowa ... ... ... ... 265,500 19 —Kentucky 178,296 20—Maine ... 152,635 2 1-— New Mexico 151,573 —New Hampshire 135,600 23Kansas 132,210 24 —Nebraska 129,279 25—Colorado 113,638 26—North Dakota ... 105,871 27 —Washington 105,836 28—Montana 103,850