On Easter, headlines reported record numbers of newcomers who were being received into the Catholic Church: 1,755 converts in the Diocese of Washington and 1,428 in the Archdiocese of Detroit, The New York Times reported.
But behind the boom in certain parishes is a more sobering reality, according to newly released data. Across 24 countries surveyed by the Pew Research Center in its new analysis, Catholicism is losing more adherents than it gains.
In the U.S., 13% of those raised Catholic have left the faith, while only 2% have joined it. The same dynamic appears even in historically Catholic countries. In Poland, where more than 90% of people were raised Catholic, 4% have left and just 1% have joined. In Spain, Chile and France, the gap is even more pronounced: Nearly 30% of Catholics have left, while only about 2% of those never raised Catholic have converted.
Hungary stands out as the only country in the study where more people joined the Catholic Church (5%) than left it (2%).
The story is different with Protestantism, which, unlike Catholicism, has gained more adherents in some countries than lost them. “Protestantism has seen a net gain from switching in nearly as many places as it has seen a net loss," according to the report.
In Brazil, for example, 15% of those raised outside Protestantism — many of them former Catholics — have joined it in adulthood, while 6% have left. In the United States, though, Protestantism has also experienced losses (14% have left and 8% have joined).
In the U.S., for every one person who becomes Protestant, about 1.8 leave the faith, according to Pew data. For Catholicism, for every convert, about 8.4 people raised Catholic no longer identify as such.
Researchers refer to this movement as “religious switching” — when adults leave the faith of their childhood and adopt another identity. In this report, Pew focused on movement between Catholicism and Protestantism in 24 countries, 12 of which are predominantly Catholic countries. About 35% of American adults have switched to another faith from the one that they had grown up with, according to Pew’s data from last year.
Context behind the numbers
Looking at the report, it’s important to keep in mind that the proportion of adults who were raised Catholic or Protestant differs significantly across the 24 countries included in the analysis, Kirsten Lesage, research associate at Pew Research Center, noted in an email.
Lesage drew on the example of Argentina. There, about three-quarters of adults were raised Catholic. Over half remain Catholic, when about 20% left the faith. Among 11% who were raised Protestant, those who stayed and those who left are evenly split.
“There are more people leaving than joining Catholicism in Argentina, while at the same time, there are more joining than leaving Protestantism. But these religious groups differ substantially in what shares were raised Catholic and Protestant to begin with,” Lesage noted.
Against the backdrop of gains and losses, in some places, Catholicism appears to challenge these broader national and global data points. In January, one author remarked that in Washington, D.C., young Protestant professionals are converting to Catholicism, attracted to the faith’s intellectual tradition and cultural influence.
“When young Protestants move to Washington, it’s usually not long before they start meeting smart, influential conservatives who believe Rome is the one true church,” according to the article. While the proportion of Protestant-to-Catholic converts is not significant nationally, they “punch above their weight due to their political and cultural prominence.”
Where do former Catholics, Protestants go?
Pew’s report notes that Catholics who leave the faith end up switching to a Protestant denomination or leaving religion completely. Breaking from faith altogether is especially common in Europe and Latin America, Pew found. In Chile, for instance, former Catholics now make up 19% of all adults — they now identify as “nones” — atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular.”
In parts of Africa, however, the pattern looks different. In countries like Kenya, Ghana and Nigeria, former Catholics are less likely to abandon religion entirely and more likely to become Protestant.
The movement from Catholicism to Protestantism has been greater than the reverse, according to political scientist Ryan Burge’s recent post, and it’s gotten wider over time. In the 1970s, Catholics were already twice as likely to become Protestant than Protestants were to become Catholic. By the 2020s, the share of Catholics switching to Protestant churches had grown.
American Protestantism itself has been undergoing a major shift in the past several decades. Traditional mainline denominations like Methodists and Lutherans have been shrinking — they declined from about 30% of Americans in 1975 to about 8% currently. Meanwhile, nondenominational evangelical churches have grown.
There is not much switching to another faith from Protestantism, according to Pew. “Adults who leave Protestantism tend to become religiously unaffiliated,” according to the report. In the United States, out of 14% of those who left Protestant faith, 10% now identify as religiously unaffiliated.
When reflecting on the switching between Catholics and Protestants in the U.S., Ryan Burge wrote that “inertia still rules America.”
“Despite decades of change, most Americans remain in the same broad religious group they were raised in,” he wrote. “Switching gets attention, but stability is still the norm.”