{"id":4182,"date":"2010-03-16T11:12:02","date_gmt":"2010-03-16T11:12:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2010\/03\/the-latino-paradox.html"},"modified":"2010-03-16T11:12:02","modified_gmt":"2010-03-16T11:12:02","slug":"the-latino-paradox","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2010\/03\/the-latino-paradox.html","title":{"rendered":"The Latino paradox"},"content":{"rendered":"

Latino immigrants are having a powerful impact on the American Catholic Church — but a new study<\/a> raises questions about whether that impact will last: <\/p>\n

\nNew arrivals from Spanish-speaking countries have helped the Catholic Church maintain its status as the dominant religion in the U.S., according to a new Trinity College report slated to be released today.<\/p>\n

In fact, the report said, without the influx of 9 million Latino Catholics from 1990 to 2008, the denomination would have lost ground.<\/p>\n

But the influx of immigrants masks another trend documented by the study: The longer Latinos live in the U.S., the less likely they are to identify themselves as Catholic.<\/p>\n

“As they spend more time in the United States, they have so many other options,” said Ariela Keysar, a Trinity demographer who worked on the report with sociologist Barry A. Kosmin and Juhem Navarro-Rivera, a doctoral candidate at the University of Connecticut.<\/p>\n

“They are able to pick and choose from faiths that are different than the one they grew up with,” Keysar said.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, the religion of choice is none at all. The number of Latinos who identify with no religion grew from 6 percent of the Latino population in 1990 to 12 percent in 2008.<\/p>\n

That doesn’t surprise the Rev. Jose Mercado, pastor at St. Augustine Church in Hartford and director of the Hartford Archdiocese’s Office of Hispanic Evangelization.<\/p>\n

“People get more secularized and they lose the sense of the religious,” Mercado said. “Other things take the place of God — careers, money … that’s a big factor not only within the Hispanic community but among Catholics as a whole.”<\/p>\n

When Mercado visits Puerto Rico, where his parents were born, he is struck by how much of a community’s life orbits around the church. “It’s the social center, the religious center,” he said. “In the United States, faith is not that visible.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Check out the link<\/a> for more.  USA Today has this write-up<\/a> on the study, as well. <\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Latino immigrants are having a powerful impact on the American Catholic Church — but a new study raises questions about whether that impact will last: New arrivals from Spanish-speaking countries have helped the Catholic Church maintain its status as the dominant religion in the U.S., according to a new Trinity College report slated to be…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ripped-from-the-headlines"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Latino paradox - The Deacon's Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2010\/03\/the-latino-paradox.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Latino paradox - 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