In the rest of the country, the RCC is declining.
According to THIS PEW SURVEY
No other religion in the United States has lost more members to other faiths, or to no faith at all, than Catholicism, according to the new survey released by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. The survey, conducted in 2007, found that 31 percent of Americans were raised Catholic, but less than 25 per cent of them still identify as Catholic. Roughly 10 percent of all Americans have strayed from Catholic roots, the study reported. Despite the loss, the survey shows that Catholics still represent nearly a quarter of the American population – just as surveys conducted in the early 1970s found. So how does a religion lose so many members and continue to break even? “It may well be that a factor in the Catholic numbers are the repeated waves of immigration,” said John Green, senior fellow at the Pew Forum. The study found that almost half of all immigrants coming into the U.S. are Catholics, most of them from Latin-American countries. The wave of immigration is changing the make-up of Catholicism. Latinos represent 45 percent of all Catholics aged 18-29 years, while only accounting for 20 percent of Catholics aged 50-59. Much of Catholicism’s loss can be chalked up to previous generations of immigrants assimilating into American culture and remaining less faithful to their ethnic identities and religions, Green said... In the marketplace of American faith, Catholicism is the big loser.
It's true several liberal Protestant churches are declining, but conservative Protestant churches are increasing. The Presbyterian Church in America is up almost two percent over last year.
In fact, the churches which have seen the most growth in Central and South America are reformed Protestant and Pentecostal churches.
As God wills.
You and Pew are wrong in your conclusions. Spinning the data doesn't change the facts. Although many Catholics at various times of their lives do stray from the Church the estrangement is rarely permanent.
Regardless of the beliefs of your Church that in many ways parallel those of the German Protestant (Nazi) Church Hispanic, Indian, Filipino, Polish, Irish, Vietnamese, and Slavic Catholic immigrants are fully human and do count in the official numbers.
INDEED.
THX.