Is the Hispanic Catholic hope slipping through the Church’s fingers?

[Michie]

There is no doubt that the largest force transforming American Catholicism is the Hispanic presence. This has been the case for more than half a century. Hispanics account for nearly 71% of the growth of the Catholic population in the United States since 1960.

Of the 63.7 million Hispanics living in the United States in 2023, about 31 million self-identify as Roman Catholic. If Hispanic Catholics constituted a country, demographically we would be the eighth most populated country in the Americas, preceded only by the United States (334 million), Brazil (216.5 million), Mexico (128 million), Colombia (52 million), Argentina (46 million), Canada (39.8 million) and Peru (34.5 million).

The Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) estimated that in 2022 there were 73.5 million Catholics in the country. That places the 31 million Hispanics just mentioned at about 42% of the entire U.S. Catholic population. The more conservative estimate from the Official Catholic Directory suggests a U.S. Catholic population of 66.5 million for the same year, bringing Hispanics to about 47% of the total U.S. Catholic population.

Continued below.

Is the Hispanic Catholic hope slipping through the Church's fingers?

A little less than half of all U.S. Catholics are Hispanic, meaning that the present and the foreseeable future of American Catholicism are intimately linked with the Hispanic experience. But that reality could be slipping.

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[jamiec]

If the Church does not evangelise, it will die. And good riddance to bad rubbish. If entire countries could go from being Catholic, to having a Catholic minority, or no Catholics, what makes US Catholicism special ? It isn't. There is nothing to stop it becoming entirely de-Christianised, like France or the UK.