Skip to main content

Rorate-Caeli: V2 Triggered Catholic Decline

Image
By

 +

JMJ

This is yet another one for the Chronicle. 

I think that V2 simply was the surfacing of riptides the moved under the calm surface of the Church for decades.  All the 'isms' combined have been working to destroy God's Church for decades.  

We know that they will fail.

It doesn't mean there won't be casualties along the way. As I've mentioned before, anyone who doesn't adhere to solid Catholic principles will become a casualty in what is truly a war.

So ... a broad understanding of Catholic Dogma, Doctrine and Principles are the way to not be bantha fodder.

P^3


Courtesy of Rorate-Caeli: V2 Triggered Decline of Catholic Church


Conclusion of Major New Economic Research Paper: "Vatican II, in 1962-1965, triggered a decline in worldwide Catholic attendance relative to that in other denominations."

 



From the summary of a major new paper just published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), in Cambridge, Massachusetts, authored by some of the greatest names in Economic research, including the famous Dr. Barro, of Harvard University, Dr. Dewitte, of the University of Oxford, and  Dr. Iannaccone, of Chapman University:


Looking Backward: Long-Term Religious Service Attendance in 66 Countries

Robert J. Barro, Edgard Dewitte & Laurence Iannaccone

Issue Date July 2025


The attendance rate at religious services is an important variable for the sociology and economics of religion, but long-term and global data are scarce. Retrospective questions from the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) allow the construction of rates of religious-service attendance back as far as the 1920s in 66 countries, half from the “Global South.” A number of checks support the reliability of the retrospective information. One exercise demonstrates the consistency between retrospective and contemporaneous survey data when the two overlap. Another procedure shows that the retrospective values are similar when generated from individual ISSP surveys for 1991, 1998, 2008, and 2018; that is, there is no clear dependence of memory on the number of years of recall. The new data document a century-long “Great Religious Divergence” between North and South. We use the data to carry out event studies for effects on religious-service attendance of two major events. Vatican II, in 1962-1965, triggered a decline in worldwide Catholic attendance relative to that in other denominations. In contrast, the endings of Communism in the early 1990s did not systematically affect religious-service attendance. Finally, in a large sample, religious-service attendance responds positively to wars and depressions. [source]


From the text of the working paper itself, available in PDF for download at the linked website, comes this:


Using an event-study design, we find that rates of religious-service attendance in predominantly Catholic countries started to decrease relative to those of all other countries and to those of other Christian countries precisely in the aftermath of Vatican II. This result holds for adult and child religious-service attendance and also holds when using the share of a country’s catholic adherents as a continuous measure of a country’s exposure. Overall, the Catholic relative attendance rate fell by four percentage points per decade between 1965 and 2015. This pattern is consistent with religion modeled as a club good (Iannaccone [1992]) and with the view that Vatican II shattered the perception of an immovable, truthholding Church (Greeley [2004], MacCulloch [2010]). More generally, these results might explain why many religious authorities are reluctant to modernize their doctrine or reduce barriers to religious participation.


The mathematical model is unassailable, and the study of the consequences of Vatican II for attendance occupy a good part of the 73-page-long paper. It is worth every paragraph, and hopefully the new American pope will be presented with the paper and its conclusions.

____

(Tip sent by reader Babatunde Obanajo, on X)

Labels: 
By New Catholic at 7/27/2025 11:28:00 PM 
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Catholic Church and the Rule of Law- Part II: Dr. John Lamont

By
+ JMJ This is the second article from Dr. Lamont from his lecture given in May 2014. P^3 Source Part A: Society of St. Hugh of Cluny Source Part B: Society of St. Hugh of Cluny 8 May2014 The Catholic Church and the Rule of Law- Part II By John Lamont To understand how the Jesuit conception of obedience departed from earlier conceptions, it is helpful to compare it with the teaching of St. Thomas on obedience. The fundamental difference between the two is that St. Thomas considers the proper object of obedience to be the precept of the superior (2a2ae q. 104 a. 2 co., ad 3). Obedience that seeks to forestall the expressed will of the superior does not bear on what the superior wants or thinks in general, but only on what the superior intends to command. St. Ignatius’s lowest degree of obedience, which he does not consider to be virtuous, is thus what St. Thomas considers to be the only form of obedience. St. Thomas holds that St. Ignatius’s alleged higher forms of o...
Post a Comment
Read more

Open Letter to Cardinal Gantin - July 6, 1988

By
There has been some discussion (read lots) about the term 'Conciliar Church'. I have posted this letter written by the Superior General and District Superiors of the SSPX after the 1988 Consecrations. Of particular interest is that the 'Conciliar Church' being referred to as a system. My paraphrase would be that the SSPX regards the 'conciliar Church' as an error within the Church. Source Open Letter to Cardinal Gantin Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops
Post a Comment
Read more

Morning and Evening and other sundry Prayers

By
+ JMJ Along the theme of P^3 (Prayer, Penance, Patience), and for my own reference ... here is a collection of Morning and Evening prayers from the Ideal Daily Missal along with some additional prayers. In this crisis of the Church, I do not think it is possible to do too much prayer, penance and have patience. P^3
Post a Comment
Read more

Rome and the SSPX - Version 2026 Part 6b: Principles and Rules for Surviving this Crisis of the Catholic Church (Principle 1)

By
 + JMJ Principle 1: Realize that something is amiss in the Catholic Church The world in which I had my Traditional Awakening, is one in which practically anything pre-Conciliar such as liturgy, doctrinc, and even dogmas are either suppressed, ignored or re-framed to be acceptable to the ‘world’. What is more, the people adhering to these pre-conciliar teachings and liturgy are persecuted by other members of the Catholic Church. The things that non-Trads say about Trads can be quite extreme. For example, accusations against Traditionalists include that they are: A revival of the Jansenists (link) , Schismatics, Heretics, Uncharitable, Lefebrists Radicals Integrists When one group of Catholics is persecuted by the others for simply wanting to live as Catholics before them did for generations … well something is wrong. Further, we need to realize that when what was previously condemned is now promoted and what was previously promoted as the trut...
Post a Comment
Read more

Forget the Reformation - It is time for Abrogation - Louie Verrecchio

By
Mr. Verrecchio has pointed out one solution to this crisis that is a dream of many Traditional Catholics of my acquaintance: The complete obliteration of the Novus Ordo Missae. If this were to occur, undoubtedly a revolt would occur within the Church, but the battle lines would be much clearer.  I assume that a lot of material heretics would make the transition to being formal heretics. P^3 Prayer Penance Patience Courtesy of Louie Verrecchio A recent article by Fr. Thomas Kocik on the New Liturgical Movement website,  Reforming the Irreformable? , is getting some well-deserved attention in traditional circles. (Do yourself a favor and read it in its entirety if you haven’t already.)
Post a Comment
Read more