Roman Catholics have overtaken Anglicans as the country’s dominant religious group. More people attend Mass every Sunday than worship with the Church of England, figures seen by The Sunday Telegraph show.
This means that the established Church has lost its place as the nation’s most popular Christian denomination after more than four centuries of unrivalled influence following the Reformation.
Last night, leading figures gave warning that the Church of England could become a minority faith and that the findings should act as a wake-up call.
The statistics show that attendance at Anglican Sunday services has dropped by 20 per cent since 2000. A survey of 37,000 churches, to be published in the new year, shows the number of people going to Sunday Mass in England last year averaged 861,000, compared with 852,000 Anglicans Âworshipping.
Maybe the CofE should look at ‘why’ this has happened.
What does the Roman church offer that the CofE church does not offer?
No. 1 – My answer would be the Curia.
Look beyond the headline.
The Telegraph has developed quite a pro-Roman Catholic approach in recent years, so they are putting a spin on this story, but . . .
1. RC mass attendance was in free fall until Eastern Europeans started arriving in huge numbers in the UK. The RC Bishop of Portsmouth conceded as much. Anglicans have also been boosted in places such as London by Afro-Caribbean arrivals, but to a lesser extent.
2. Note that RC attendance is also declining, just not as fast as the CofE. The Roman story is not really a success story, just a less obvious failure.
3. It isn’t clear that the RCs are offering something the CofE isn’t offering. That could only be clear if we had figures showing what impact each church’s evangelism is making (i.e. new converts, ex-Prime Ministers apart), rather than looking at the effects of what is in essence international transfer growth.
If you read it all you will find: “The rise of Catholicism has been bolstered by an influx of immigrants from eastern Europe and Africa, who have packed the pews of Catholic parishes that had previously been dwindling.”
In this West Yorkshire town there are many Poles of recent influx, as can be noted from the Polish groceries in some shops! The once main RC church that had an elderly congregation, some of them post WW 2 Poles, has been bolstered by the young immigrants.
I wonder why they didn’t say that Britain has become a ‘Muslim country’, since attendance at mosques is higher than both Christian churches, and is actually growing.
[url=http://www.christiantoday.co.uk/article/new.study.finds.mosque.goers.to.double.church.attendance/3858.htm]From Christianity Today:[/url]
[blockquote]According to the study – The Future of the Church – around 930,000 Muslims attended a mosque at least once a week in 2004, just outnumbering the 916,000 regular church goers in the Church of England.[/blockquote]
I write as a Catholic priest in London. I want to say first of all that I am not aware of any spirit of triumphalism among us. Second, I want to add a cautionary note about Catholic realities in the UK at the moment: namely, that we have serious vocational problems. I should think that we ordain only one-tenth of the number of priests that the Anglicans do, and we are, as you can see from the above numbers, looking after roughly the same number of worshippers on a Sunday. Remember too that an older generation of clergy is dying off, and so overall we have a decline in clergy numbers. This shortage of priests is a cause of real stress. If you doubt that, consider that I will shortly baptise my 104th and 105th baby this year; that we have over 1000 at Mass each Sunday. Yet I worry that we do not give the pastoral care that we should, even with the help of gifted parishioners. Too many people seem to slip between the net. Another point to be made is that the Catholic Church is strongly metropolitan, with much more scattered membership in the rural areas. The Church of England is stronger there. Finally,
there is little sense here on the ground of being in competition. At the risk of seeming polemical, I would say that the Church of England is increasingly evangelical – which is ironic given Richard Harries’ comments in The Observer since evangelical attitudes to ethical issues would differ little from the Catholic perspective (see separate post above). On a doctrinal level this increasing evangelical ethos in the C of E, and the decline of Anglo-Catholicism, mean that the distinction between our two churches is now more sharply drawn. Of course I would love the Catholic Church to be more prominent in national life; realistically, we are hard pressed even to look after our own. Venerable John Newman, pray for us.
Terry Tee, thanks for the insights into what is happening in your neck of the woods. Here in the United States, the number of Roman Catholics has been increasing while the number of RC clergy has been decreasing. This according to statistics published by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. I look at those statistics and wonder of correlation reflects causation. Hypothesis: Having fewer priests around encourages more people to go to church. Maybe you’re in better shape than you think you are.
Terry Tee you must know that to be Catholic is different of being Anglican. I am Anglican and my family Catholic, they go to Church 12 or 10 times a year, but they are faithful to the church, some pray the rosary or other devotion, cross themselves when passing in front of a church(showing respect for HER) and is very important to them that their kids have the crisma and first communion. The same don’t happens with no Catholics. Protestant Anglicans need more a Pastor than Catholics need a Priest.
[url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7157998.stm]This article[/url] on the BBC cites research suggesting the Anglicans will overtake the Catholics in a few years
I moved back to Britain in September to work at Ridley Hall, Cambridge, and until November I lived in a Roman Catholic institute of theology just around the corner. As #7 says that competitive spirit between Anglicans and Catholics has disappeared. Indeed, I share the enthusiasm of the Principal of Ridley for our relationship with our Roman Catholic neighbors, and I delight in the daily fellowship I have with my assistant, who is herself a devout Catholic but thoroughly committed to the ministry of evangelical Ridley.
While everyone has been wringing their hands about the growing Muslim population of Britain few have noticed the growth of the Christian population, either. Eastern Europeans have come in their hundreds of thousands and are Catholics, while others have come from the Global South and are a mixture of Anglican, Pentecostal, Protestant and indigenous church backgrounds. This creates a comity of mission and encouraging levels of cooperation rather than a crass denominational competition.
There is no way that the dear old Church of England could have ministered to all those Poles, just as there is also no way that it can reach out to all the other ethnicities that have crowded into this one little over-populated island. Working alongside rather than against one another, I suspect that in years to come this will make for some exciting missionary opportunities