Newly released statistics show the decline of the
Catholic Church in England and Wales in 1960s and 1970s.
Research by Latin Mass Society has demonstrated the
striking decline of a range of statistical indications of the health of the
Catholic Church in England and Wales in the 1960s and 1970s.
To our knowledge this
data has never been made available in collated form before: the number of
ordinations year by year since 1860, the number of priests since 1890, and
baptisms, marriages, and receptions, and estimates of the Catholic population,
since 1913.
Among the findings are:
Marriages: The
number of marriages collapsed by a third between 1968 and 1978 (from 47,417 to
31,534), and has continued a rapid decline since then, now standing at less
than 10,000 a year, a quarter of the 1968 level in absolute terms, and even
less in relation to the estimated Catholic population (from 12 per thousand in
1968) to 2½ per thousand in 2010).
Conversions
fell off a cliff in the 1960s. From a peak of 15,794 in 1959, it fell to 5,117
in 1972; in relation the Catholic population, it fell by more than 70% between those
two years. It has not recovered.
Baptisms
halved between 1964 and 1977 (137,673 in 1964 to 68,351 in 1977), and are even
lower today (oscillating around the 60,000 mark). This is not just the effect
of the end of the ‘baby boom’: considered in relation to total live births for
England and Wales (using data from the Office for National Statistics), the
first half of the 20th century saw steady growth, with Catholic
baptisms peaking at nearly 16% of all live births in 1963. This was followed by
a decline of a third between the mid 1960s and the mid 1970s. A more gentle
decline has continued to the present: today fewer than 10% of babies born alive
in England and Wales are being baptised in the Catholic Church.
Ordinations fell
by more than 56% between 1965 and 1977 (from 233 to 101), and the decline has continued.
Even on the more optimistic figures supplied by the National Office of
Vocations (compared to the Catholic Directory) for the current year, showing an
increase on recent years, numbers are at scarcely 30% of their 1964 level.
(Counting only ordinations to the diocesan clergy, there were 134 in 1964; the
NOV predicts 41 this year.)
Dr Joseph Shaw, the Chairman of the Latin Mass
Society, who led the research, comments:
‘Anyone with an
interest in the future of the Catholic Church in England and Wales will find
these figures illuminating. They show
unambiguously that something went seriously wrong in the Church in England and
Wales in the 1960s and 1970s. Catholics ceased quite suddenly to see the
value of getting married, having large families, and having their children
baptised. Non-Catholics no longer perceived the Church as the ark of salvation,
and ceased to seek admission. Young men no longer offered themselves for the
priesthood in the same numbers as before.
‘It is not fanciful to
connect this catastrophe to the wrenching changes which were taking place in
the Church at that time, when the Second Vatican Council was being prepared,
discussed, and, often erronesouly, applied. As Pope Benedict wrote in the Motu
Proprio Summorum Pontificum (2007):
in many places celebrations were not faithful to the prescriptions of the new Missal, but the latter actually was understood as authorizing or even requiring creativity, which frequently led to deformations of the liturgy which were hard to bear. I am speaking from experience, since I too lived through that period with all its hopes and its confusion. And I have seen how arbitrary deformations of the liturgy caused deep pain to individuals totally rooted in the faith of the Church.
‘The theological and
liturgical fashions of that era were invariably justified by the hope of
positive pastoral results, and these results manifestly failed to materialise.
‘The effect of dissent
from the Church’s teaching is particularly manifest in relation to
contraception, which has had a direct consequence on the Catholic birth rate,
as reflected in the number of baptisms, compared to the national birth rate.
‘The Church in England and Wales today has fewer
than half the ordinations each year than it had in the 1860s, but more than
double the number of priests. A
large proportion of those priests, however, will die or have to stop work over
the next decade. In this respect we are still living on our capital, and this
capital is about to run out.
‘The Extraordinary Form has not lost its power to attract
young men to the priesthood, and the communities which have grown up around it
today provide disproportionate numbers of vocations, marriages, and baptisms. Thirteen young men from England and Wales are
currently studying for the priesthood in the different religious orders
committed to the Extraordinary Form; three more should join them in September;
these are numbers which many dioceses would envy.
‘We believe that the
Extraordinary Form (the Traditional Mass) has an important role to play in
resolving the crisis in the Church.’
Notes on the statistics.
Unless otherwise
indicated, the statistics are taken from the Catholic Directory. Statistics for ordinations can be recovered
only by manually counting the lists of men ordained each year; some of this
work was done by the Rev. Stephen Morgan and a team at the Diocese of
Portsmouth. The Latin Mass Society has filled in the gaps in Rev. Morgan’s
figures and extended the range of dates covered in both directions. In
addition, the LMS has added the total number of clergy, and the numbers given
in the Directory’s ‘Recapitulation of
Statistics’ since 1913, which include Baptisms, Marriages, Adult Conversions (renamed
‘Receptions’ in 1976), and estimates of the Catholic population.
We are very grateful to
the Rev. Stephen Morgan for letting us use the fruits of his research, to the
Fathers of the London Oratory for giving us access to their library, and to a
number of Latin Mass Society volunteers for their time.
For further information
contact either: Mike Lord, General Manager, on 020 7404 7284 or michael@lms.org.uk
The full press release (reproduced here) on the LMS website:
A downloadable spreadsheet showing all the figures with 13 graphs:
JPEGs of all the graphs on a Flickr set:
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