Despite the Catholic drive for big families and no birth control, U.S. Catholics are not fully reproducing themselves except in the country parishesand more than 80% of U.S. Catholics live in cities.
Many a churchman sees a Catholic decline ahead unless the Catholic Church can strengthen itself in the rural areas, where families are still big enough to keep church membership growing. With Protestants outnumbering Catholics in rural areas by nearly five to one (the national ratio is less than two to one), falling urban birthrates (ten adults now rear only seven children) threaten to make Catholicism relatively less important in the...
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