{"id":6870,"date":"2006-07-05T00:01:30","date_gmt":"2006-07-05T00:01:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/the-state-of-the-church.html"},"modified":"2006-07-05T00:01:30","modified_gmt":"2006-07-05T00:01:30","slug":"the-state-of-the-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/the-state-of-the-church.html","title":{"rendered":"The State of the Church…"},"content":{"rendered":"

…in Britain. Ruth Gledhill reports in the Times:<\/a><\/p>\n

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THE Roman Catholic Church in Britain is facing its greatest threat since the Reformation, according to research. <\/p>\n

Over three decades Mass attendance has slumped by 40 per cent, baptisms by 50 per cent, Catholic marriages by 60 per cent and confirmations by 60 per cent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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The 260-page study of the Church indicates that the number of adult converts fell by 55 per cent and first communions by nearly 40 per cent, described as the \u201cgreatest pastoral and demographic catastrophe\u201d since the Reformation of the 16th century. <\/p>\n

The study covers the period from 1963 to 1991. But more recent figures, from 2004, indicate little improvement. <\/p>\n

In 1991 Mass attendance in England and Wales stood at 1.3 million, compared with 960,000 in 2004. Deaths among congregations rose by nearly 40 per cent between 1963 and 1991, reflecting the growing elderly profile. However, the Catholic population of England and Wales increased by 6 per cent. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Another part of Gledhill’s story is a new book by Tom Horwood on the problems of the Church in Britain and his proposed solutions.<\/a><\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…in Britain. Ruth Gledhill reports in the Times: THE Roman Catholic Church in Britain is facing its greatest threat since the Reformation, according to research. Over three decades Mass attendance has slumped by 40 per cent, baptisms by 50 per cent, Catholic marriages by 60 per cent and confirmations by 60 per cent. The 260-page…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThe State of the Church... - Via Media<\/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\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/the-state-of-the-church.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The State of the Church... - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"…in Britain. 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Ruth Gledhill reports in the Times: THE Roman Catholic Church in Britain is facing its greatest threat since the Reformation, according to research. Over three decades Mass attendance has slumped by 40 per cent, baptisms by 50 per cent, Catholic marriages by 60 per cent and confirmations by 60 per cent. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6870\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}