The RCC just couldn’t compete with the “Americanism” they openly despised for much of our history. Once the the flock left their respective ethnic ghettos and became happy assimilated white folks, neither the Novus Ordum hokum nor any “conservative” counter movement could bring them back. It doesn’t help that most Catholics by ancestry happen to be raised in regions of the country where religious fervor of any kind is frowned upon.
Why do you think that is ?
Don’t even try to hang this on the Protestants as both Spain and France did a good job of wiping Protestants from their country so you can’t blame it on them there .
The truth is that the true Gospel is not being preached in Roman Catholic churches and as their people get educated they realize their in no substance in what is being preached in their pulpits .
Lera:
And what about the UK, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, the Netherlands [Dutch], Germany [other than Bavaria, which is still very strongly Catholic] etc which are all countries with majority Protestants and are worse off in terms of Church attendance that most of the Catholic Countries in Europe [save France and Spain which are trending like the Protestant countries].
Maybe you aren't up on history much, or maybe you think 230 years is a long time, but autocracy or despotism is pretty much the default for humanity whether it's been under paganism, Catholicism, Protestantism, Orthodoxy, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc., etc.
Don’t forget the fact that the vast majority of the under 35s in Ireland don’t attend mass. Even”devout” Portugal couldn’t stop gay marriage.