Reason 34

34. Because show a great decrease in conversions to Catholicism following the use of the New Mass. Conversions, which were up to 100,000 a year in the U.S., have decreased to less than 10,000! (Bolding in the original).


This reason is very difficult to deal with simply because I cannot find these statics. At all. The data on the rate of Catholic conversions seems to be either unavailable or well hidden. Thus I cannot comment on the veracity of this claim.

However, because of the statistics offered in Reason 9 (which in fact cited a source) were incorrect, I am inclined to doubt these numbers. Recently a non-scientific study found around 100,000 coverts to the Catholic Church. The numbers may have been as low as 10,000 in the past, I don’t know, but I find the 100,000 number fifty years ago doubtful, primarily because of population. In 1965 (arguably the tail end of the grand conversion, if it existed) the Catholic population sat at 45.6 million, out of about 194 million people. With these conversion numbers, every ten years ought to have 1 million conversions, or, 2 percent of the total Catholic population in 1965. And those would only be conversions in the past ten years, not counting the years before that.

I think it likely that the numbers given in the pamphlet reflect, at best, the absolute highest conversion rate any year had prior to the revision of the liturgy and then the absolute lowest in the years following.

Again, however, I simple cannot look at the actual numbers and do not trust this statistic. If I can find viable evidence, I shall deal with it then.