How many US adults have connections to Catholicism? What new survey finds
Catholics make up one of the largest religious groups in the United States — more than any Protestant denomination — and many who don't identify with the faith still said they have a personal or family connection to it, according to a new survey.
Nearly half of Americans, 47%, said they have a relationship to the Catholic faith, with 20% identifying as Catholic, 9% identifying as a 'cultural Catholic' and 9% saying they are a former Catholic, according to a June 16 Pew Research Center study.
Another 9% of respondents said they were connected to Catholicism in different ways — either having a Catholic parent or partner or having attended Mass, the survey found.
'Catholicism's roots in the United States run deep,' researchers said.
The survey of 9,544 U.S. adults, including 1,787 Catholics, took place Feb. 3 to 9 — prior to the hospitalization of the late Pope Francis — and has a margin of error of plus or minus 1.3 percentage points.
While 50% of Americans who identify as Catholic said they pray daily, 40% said they 'seldom or never attend Mass,' according to the survey.
Twenty-eight percent of Catholics said they go to Mass at least weekly, per the poll.
A plurality of Catholics, 47%, said they never go to confession, compared with 23% who said they go at least once a year, the survey found.
A small number of U.S. adults, 1.5%, are converts to Catholicism, according to the survey, which found this group sometimes observes the faith at higher rates than those born into it.
Thirty-eight percent of people who have converted to Catholicism attend Mass weekly, 10 percentage points higher than people who were born into the faith, the survey found.
What do Catholics see as essential to their religious identity?
Researchers also asked Catholics about the essentials of religious identity. A personal relationship with Jesus Christ ranked first on the list, with 69% of Catholics believing this was an important part of their faith, according to the survey.
Fifty percent of Catholics said devotion to the Virgin Mary was important and 47% said helping the poor and needy was essential to their religious identity, the survey found.
Opposing abortion, taking care of the environment and caring for immigrants also showed up on the list of essentials, at 32%, 31% and 30%, respectively, according to the survey.
Pilgrimages were the least important to Catholic identity, at 9%, according to the survey.
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Miami Herald
5 hours ago
- Miami Herald
How many US adults have connections to Catholicism? What new survey finds
Catholics make up one of the largest religious groups in the United States — more than any Protestant denomination — and many who don't identify with the faith still said they have a personal or family connection to it, according to a new survey. Nearly half of Americans, 47%, said they have a relationship to the Catholic faith, with 20% identifying as Catholic, 9% identifying as a 'cultural Catholic' and 9% saying they are a former Catholic, according to a June 16 Pew Research Center study. Another 9% of respondents said they were connected to Catholicism in different ways — either having a Catholic parent or partner or having attended Mass, the survey found. 'Catholicism's roots in the United States run deep,' researchers said. The survey of 9,544 U.S. adults, including 1,787 Catholics, took place Feb. 3 to 9 — prior to the hospitalization of the late Pope Francis — and has a margin of error of plus or minus 1.3 percentage points. While 50% of Americans who identify as Catholic said they pray daily, 40% said they 'seldom or never attend Mass,' according to the survey. Twenty-eight percent of Catholics said they go to Mass at least weekly, per the poll. A plurality of Catholics, 47%, said they never go to confession, compared with 23% who said they go at least once a year, the survey found. A small number of U.S. adults, 1.5%, are converts to Catholicism, according to the survey, which found this group sometimes observes the faith at higher rates than those born into it. Thirty-eight percent of people who have converted to Catholicism attend Mass weekly, 10 percentage points higher than people who were born into the faith, the survey found. What do Catholics see as essential to their religious identity? Researchers also asked Catholics about the essentials of religious identity. A personal relationship with Jesus Christ ranked first on the list, with 69% of Catholics believing this was an important part of their faith, according to the survey. Fifty percent of Catholics said devotion to the Virgin Mary was important and 47% said helping the poor and needy was essential to their religious identity, the survey found. Opposing abortion, taking care of the environment and caring for immigrants also showed up on the list of essentials, at 32%, 31% and 30%, respectively, according to the survey. Pilgrimages were the least important to Catholic identity, at 9%, according to the survey.
Yahoo
8 hours ago
- Yahoo
Meet the Man Who Created the Juneteenth Flag
This story was part of a special Juneteenth project originally published in 2022 with Vox that explored the ongoing struggle for freedom for Black Americans. As the Juneteenth holiday approaches, you'll start to see various symbols of Blackness across the country. Front lawns, apartment balconies, and clothing with the pan-African flag, 'Black Power' fist, and other celebratory symbols will be everywhere. But did you know there's a specific flag for Juneteenth? In fact, it has a backstory that goes back to the late 1990s. Capital B spoke with Ben Haith, the flag's creator, and others to learn more about its history and impact. Haith, a community organizer and activist known better as 'Boston Ben,' created the flag in 1997. In an interview with Capital B Atlanta, Haith said once he learned about Juneteenth, he felt passionately it needed representation. 'I was just doing what God told me,' Haith said. 'I have somewhat of a marketing background, and I thought Juneteenth, what it represented, needed to have a symbol.' Haith wasn't impressed with the initial concept, but every Juneteenth holiday he would raise the flag near his son's middle school in Roxbury, a majority Black community in Boston. After getting his inspiration for the flag, he knew which colors and symbols he wanted in the flag — he just needed to finalize it. That's when he met illustrator Lisa Jeanne-Graf, who responded to an ad in a local newspaper and finalized the flag in 2000. Juneteenth is often associated with red, green, and black: the colors of the pan-African flag. However, those aren't the colors of the Juneteenth flag. The banner shares the colors of the American flag: red, white, and blue. In the past, Haith has said it was a purposeful choice — a reminder that Black Americans descended from slaves are exactly that: American. 'For so long, our ancestors weren't considered citizens of this country,' Haith said. 'But realistically, and technically, they were citizens. They just were deprived of being recognized as citizens. So I thought it was important that the colors portray red, white, and blue, which we see in the American flag.' Steven Williams, the president of the National Juneteenth Observance Foundation, agreed with the sentiment. 'We're Americans of African descent,' Williams said. '[The National Juneteenth Observance Foundation's] mission statement is to bring all Americans together to join our common bond of freedom.' There's been some debate about whether the Juneteenth flag is the most appropriate symbol for the holiday. Haith said he understood why people could have some hesitancy around commemorating the freedom of slaves by using a red, white, and blue flag, which some see as a tribute to the oppressors of Black Americans. 'Some of us were raised to recognize the American flag, we salute the American flag, we pledged allegiance to the American flag,' Haith said when asked of the skepticism around the flag he created. 'We had relatives who went to war to fight for this country. We put a lot into this country, even when our ancestors were enslaved. They worked to help make this country an economic power in the world.' The star in the middle of the flag has a dual meaning. On June 19, 1865, Black slaves in Galveston, Texas, were informed of the Emancipation Proclamation, President Abraham Lincoln's declaration of the freedom of enslaved people. The star on the Juneteenth flag is meant to represent Texas as the Lone Star state, but also the freedom of enslaved citizens. Williams also spoke of the use of stars in helping slaves escape to freedom. 'When people were escaping down the Underground Railroad … they used stars to navigate where they were at, when they were going up and down,' he said. With its dual meaning, it's meant to represent the role that Texas plays in the history of Juneteenth, but also as another reminder that Black people are free. The outline was inspired by a nova, which is an explosion in space that creates the appearance of a new star. In this instance, it represents both slaves being free and a new beginning for Black Americans, Haith said. The bottom half of the flag is red and shaped in an arch, which has similar meaning to the white outline around the star. The curve is meant to represent a 'new horizon.' Williams hopes the design reminds people to keep in mind that new beginnings take effort. 'I tell young people, 'You are free,'' he said. 'You might have obstacles, you might have hurdles, but you are free. … And you need to exercise that freedom, which is liberty.' Juneteenth is now a federal holiday, nearly 200 years after slaves in Texas were informed of their freedom. The change, signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2021, came at the behest of demands for racial progress following the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Cities across the country were forced to reckon with calls to remove and rename monuments and institutions honoring Confederate leaders of the past. In Richmond, Virginia, a capital of the former Confederacy, monuments of Confederate generals that were centuries old were dismantled after protester demands across the country. In metro Atlanta, there is an ongoing debate around the removal of Confederate leaders etched on the side of Stone Mountain. It is said to be the largest monument to the Confederacy in the world. In America, the Southern Poverty Law Center estimates that at least 160 Confederate symbols were dismantled in 2020. Individual states started to recognize Juneteenth as an official holiday prior to Biden's declaration. The first was Texas in 1980, and more states followed suit in 2020. Theo Foster, a professor of African American History at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, noted that symbols celebrating Black pride are important, but they're not enough. 'We tend to just hold on to symbols and let the material go,' he said. 'That's where I'm hypercritical of progress narratives, and flags, and 1619 projects, because we don't get to that point of where the rubber meets the road where the symbols meet the experience of Black boy joy or Black girl magic.' Williams recognizes the flag as a larger part of his organization's decades-long campaign to make Juneteenth a national holiday. The National Juneteenth Observance Foundation has been on the front lines of the fight to have Juneteenth nationally recognized since its founding in 1997. Haith himself is a member. Foster says he sees the Juneteenth flag as an attempt to honor Black Americans' enslaved ancestors. 'Racism exists, anti-Blackness exists. How do we respond to that problem?' he said. 'I think the Juneteenth flag is an attempt to respond to that harm that is ongoing. I think people are right to be critical of it, but also to be in conversation of what's useful about it.' Haith said he's been overwhelmed by the fact that Juneteenth is now a federal holiday, and feels honored when people use the flag. 'I believe we represent our ancestors,' Haith said. 'When we celebrate, we're celebrating for them, and we're celebrating for the future of our people. The flag represents the people of the past, it represents us, and it will represent the people in the future.' The post Meet the Man Who Created the Juneteenth Flag appeared first on Capital B News.
Boston Globe
10 hours ago
- Boston Globe
Why Pride Month will always matter
Advertisement We loved each other behind closed doors, initially planning our future without ever saying the word 'boyfriend' publicly. That's what you do when growing up gay in a world that teaches you to hide. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up And then one day, I found Scott. Lifeless, at the bottom of a pool. The autopsy called it an accidental drowning. But for me, his death left behind more questions than answers. He was 27. I was 26. I came out in a Facebook post later that day. Not because I was ready, but because I couldn't pretend anymore. I couldn't grieve for my boyfriend when I couldn't call him that. I couldn't live in a closet that had just turned into a tomb. Even then, some people seemed more focused on my being gay than the fact that the love of my life had died. One of Scott's relatives told me to my face — just days after his death — that 'homosexuality isn't natural.' I was barely functioning and suddenly being forced to defend my existence in the middle of overwhelming grief. Advertisement As Scott's obituary was being written, I was at first listed only as 'his friend' but asked his family to change that to 'partner.' I'm deeply grateful they did. That I had to advocate for myself says everything about the quiet, exhausting grief queer people carry. We're not just mourning the person, we're mourning the silence we were forced to live in. That's the cost of shame. That's the price of hiding. And that's why Pride Month still matters. I n the years that followed, I tried to outrun the pain. I worked obsessively to build a business from scratch, convincing myself that if I achieved enough, performed enough, I'd finally feel worthy. But I was building coping mechanisms, not success. Eventually, I lost it all. I went bankrupt. Underneath the rubble of my business wasn't just financial failure — it was the little boy who never believed he was enough. Who learned early that being himself was something to hide or somehow overcome with professional accomplishments. We don't talk enough about what the closet does to people. I went to an all-boys Catholic high school, where I didn't build any lasting friendships. No one was overtly cruel to me — people were actually pretty kind. Yet I kept a safe distance, afraid that if I let anyone too close, they'd see through the version of myself I had learned to perform. I wasn't bullied but I was invisible. Advertisement In the draft of our senior yearbook, I was voted 'Biggest Non-Conformist.' I was so ashamed I begged the editor to take it out (he did). I thought they were mocking me, calling me the weird gay guy. Now, I see that they weren't insulting me. They were acknowledging that I was different — they were giving me a compliment. I just wasn't ready to accept that being different could be a good thing. I walked the hallways feeling a few layers removed from everyone else — constantly putting on an act, never fully present. That experience rewired how I moved through the world. Later, I became someone who always went the extra mile for bosses, for boyfriends, for friends who didn't always reciprocate. I chased wealth and admiration as if they were the antidote to the thing I was too ashamed to say out loud. The distance between myself and others didn't just cause me to miss out on teenage romance. I missed out on myself. Participants cheer at the start of the Boston Pride Parade in 2019. Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff Today, when I see politicians banning books, erasing history about the gay rights movement, and calling education about LGBTQ+ topics 'grooming,' I don't just see a political strategy. I see the infliction of damage. Let's talk about grooming, then. Because I was groomed, too — to be straight. I was groomed by every TV show that told me boys only marry girls. By every classroom that pretended people like me didn't exist. By every adult who said, 'You'll meet a nice girl someday,' before I had the chance to discover who I was. That's grooming. It's just the kind we've normalized. What grooms kids into shame is erasure. It's growing up not seeing yourself represented in books. It's being told, through silence or scorn, that who you are, and who you love, is inappropriate. That your family is 'too political.' That your hand holding and kisses should be kept private or at least 'not shoved in our faces.' Advertisement When we talk to children about families that have two moms, or two dads, or one parent, or chosen family — it's not about sex. It's about visibility. It's about the kid with two dads seeing themselves in a book and thinking, I belong here. It's about giving every child the gift of empathy, not confusion. I didn't get that growing up. I don't believe Scott did either. And that's why Pride is as important as ever. It is not just a parade or a party. It's a protest. It's a memorial. It's a lifeline. It's for the ones who came out late. For the ones who never got to come out at all. For the queer kids in classrooms across the country who are being told their truth is inappropriate or wrong or bad. And for the adults who still carry the consequences of their silence. Today, I'm proud to say I'm happily married to an incredible man. But it took 10 years of therapy and a lot of trauma to finally get here. I'm 36, and I still feel emotionally underdeveloped in some ways. That's the damage shame can do. My husband didn't come out to his family until he was 29. He was 34 when we started dating; I was his first boyfriend. We're both learning how to love out loud. We're unlearning the kinds of choices you make for survival. Advertisement So when someone rolls their eyes and says, 'Why do we still need Pride?' this is what I want to say: Because silence kills. Because shame ruins lives. Because being gay is a gift but only if the world lets you unwrap it. And because I loved a man who never felt fully safe being himself, in a world still learning how to accept people like us. Rest in peace, Scott. A.J. MacQuarrie is a growth strategist and sales leader who helps others navigate growth with purpose. He lives in the Boston area with his husband and their two dogs. Send comments to magazine@
