The Pew Hispanic Trends project poses a riddle: If fewer Hispanics are Catholic, how come more Catholics be Hispanic?
The answer is in data posted on its FactTank blog.
Pew research shoes that the percentage of Latinos in the United States who are Catholic is declining rapidly, from 67 percent in 2010 to 55 percent today. Still, the percentage of U.S. Catholics who are Hispanic is growing, according to research by Boston College and Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. That work says that the proportion of U.S. Catholics who are Hispanic grew from about a quarter in the 1980s to 40 percent today.
So what gives?
Pew says that the dynamic behind these seemingly contradictory changes is the sheer size of the Hispanic population, at more than 35 million adults.
Pew’s Hispanic Research Center was a primary source of information for the new “100 Questions and Answers About Hispanics and Latinos.” Its director, Mark Hugo Lopez, served as one of the expert allies who vetted the project.
