2017 USCCB Convocation Participants Guidebook and Journal | 页面 22

The Call to Missionary Discipleship
acquisition of information is often instantaneous, though
not always accurate, and that events that occur across the
world are known by everyone right away.
• The societal, cultural, and political climate within the
United States (and in many cases, around the world), has
shifted dramatically, even in the last year.
• Due to globalization, we have a deeper understanding of
how we all affect one another.
• Family life has been affected intensely by socio-cultural
dynamics, technology, availability of work, high mobility,
and so forth. Family structure and stability has experi-
enced major shifts, and various challenges have arisen
from or been associated with the sexual revolution,
the erosion of marriage both culturally and legally, and
socio-economic difficulties.
• Geographically, the traditionally strong presence of
Catholics in the Northeast has been shifting to the South
and West.
• Languages spoken in Catholic Churches in the United
States have shifted over the last fifty years, with more
Spanish, Filipino, Vietnamese, and Korean, for example.
Here are a few statistics to set the scene for the discussion at
the Convocation:
Catholic Population in the United States
• The overall Catholic population has risen over the past
fifty years, from 48.5 million in 1965 to 74.2 million in
2016 . . . but so has the number of former Catholic adults
in the past forty years, from 7.5 million in 1975 up to 30.1
million in 2016.
• Almost half of Catholics who are now unaffiliated (48
percent) left Catholicism before reaching eighteen years
old . . . an additional three in ten left the Catholic Church
17