Catholic Church in the United States
With 23 percent of the United States' population as of 2018, the Catholic Church is the country's second-largest religious grouping after Protestantism, and the country's largest single church or Christian denomination where Protestantism is divided into separate denominations.[3] In a 2020 Gallup poll, 25% of Americans said they were Catholic.[4] The United States has the fourth-largest Catholic population in the world, after Brazil, Mexico, and the Philippines.[5]
For the structure of the Catholic Church in the United States, see List of Catholic dioceses in the United States.
Catholic Church in the United States
United States and other territories of the United States, excluding Puerto Rico.
16,429 (2022)[1]
72,000,000+ (2020)[2]
Catholicism has had a significant cultural, social, and political impact on the United States, with the religion being long associated with the Democratic Party and left-wing political movements.[6] Anti-Catholicism was the policy for the English who first settled the New England colonies, and it persisted in the face of warfare with the French in New France. The American Revolution and classical liberalism restored religious freedom for Catholics. The 1840s saw Catholics began to identify with the Democrats against the conservative and evangelical-influenced Whigs.[7] This continued into the 20th century, where Catholics formed a core part of the New Deal Coalition. Since the 1970s, these ties have weakened, with Catholics often being regarded as swing voters. Two Catholics have been President of the United States: Democratic presidents John F. Kennedy (1961–1963) and Joe Biden (2021–present). While contradicting certain teachings of the church, surveys have repeatedly indicated that laity are more culturally liberal than the median voter,[8] including on abortion rights[9] and same-sex marriage.[9]
Catholics are also the most likely of Christians in the United States to support the morality of casual sex.[10] Institutional leadership tends to lean more traditionalist.[9][11]
Catholics gather as local communities called parishes, headed by a priest, and typically meet at a permanent church building for liturgies every Sunday, weekdays and on holy days. Within the 196 geographical dioceses and archdioceses (excluding the Archdiocese for the Military Services), there were 17,007 local Catholic parishes in the United States in 2018.[79] The Catholic Church has the third highest total number of local congregations in the US behind Southern Baptists and United Methodists. However, the average Catholic parish is significantly larger than the average Baptist or Methodist congregation; there are more than four times as many Catholics as Southern Baptists and more than eight times as many Catholics as United Methodists.[80]
In the United States, there are 197 ecclesiastical jurisdictions:
Eastern Catholic Churches are churches with origins in Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa that have their own distinctive liturgical, legal and organizational systems and are identified by the national or ethnic character of their region of origin. Each is considered fully equal to the Latin tradition within the Catholic Church. In the United States, there are 15 Eastern Church dioceses (called eparchies) and two Eastern Church archdioceses (or archeparchies), the Byzantine Catholic Archeparchy of Pittsburgh and the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia.
The apostolic exarchate for the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church in the United States is headed by a bishop who is a member of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. An apostolic exarchate is the Eastern Catholic Church equivalent of an apostolic vicariate. It is not a full-fledged diocese/eparchy, but is established by the Holy See for the pastoral care of Eastern Catholics in an area outside the territory of the Eastern Catholic Church to which they belong. It is headed by a bishop or a priest with the title of exarch.
The Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter was established January 1, 2012, to serve former Anglican groups and clergy in the United States who sought to become Catholic. Similar to a diocese though national in scope, the ordinariate is based in Houston, Texas, and includes parishes and communities across the United States that are fully Catholic, while retaining elements of their Anglican heritage and traditions.
As of 2017, 8 dioceses out of 195 are vacant (sede vacante). None of the current bishops or archbishops are past the retirement age of 75.
The central leadership body of the Catholic Church in the United States is the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, made up of the hierarchy of bishops (including archbishops) of the United States and the U.S. Virgin Islands, although each bishop is independent in his own diocese, answerable only to the Holy See. The USCCB elects a president to serve as their administrative head, but he is in no way the "head" of the church or of Catholics in the United States. In addition to the 195 dioceses and one exarchate[81] represented in the USCCB, there are several dioceses in the nation's other four overseas dependencies. In the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the bishops in the six dioceses (one metropolitan archdiocese and five suffragan dioceses) form their own episcopal conference, the Puerto Rican Episcopal Conference (Conferencia Episcopal Puertorriqueña).[82] The bishops in US insular areas in the Pacific Ocean—the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, the Territory of American Samoa, and the Territory of Guam—are members of the Episcopal Conference of the Pacific.
No primate exists for Catholics in the United States. In the 1850s, the Archdiocese of Baltimore was acknowledged a Prerogative of Place, which confers to its archbishop some of the leadership responsibilities granted to primates in other countries. The Archdiocese of Baltimore was the first diocese established in the United States, in 1789, with John Carroll (1735–1815) as its first bishop. It was, for many years, the most influential diocese in the fledgling nation. Now, however, the United States has several large archdioceses and a number of cardinal-archbishops.
By far, most Catholics in the United States belong to the Latin Church of the Catholic Church. Rite generally refers to the form of worship ("liturgical rite") in a church community owing to cultural and historical differences as well as differences in practice. However, the Vatican II document, Orientalium Ecclesiarum ("Of the Eastern Churches"), acknowledges that these Eastern Catholic communities are "true Churches" and not just rites within the Catholic Church.[83] There are 14 other churches in the United States (23 within the global Catholic Church) which are in communion with Rome, fully recognized and valid in the eyes of the Catholic Church. They have their own bishops and eparchies. The largest of these communities in the U.S. is the Chaldean Catholic Church.[84] Most of these churches are of Eastern European and Middle Eastern origin. Eastern Catholic Churches are distinguished from Eastern Orthodox, identifiable by their usage of the term Catholic.[85]
In recent years, particularly following the issuing of the apostolic letter Summorum Pontificum by Pope Benedict XVI in 2007, the United States has emerged as a stronghold for the small but growing Traditionalist Catholic movement, along with France, England and a few other Anglophone countries.[86][87] There are over 600 locations throughout the country where the Traditional Latin Mass is offered.[88]
Criticism by Pope Francis[edit]
In 2023 Pope Francis criticized the Catholic Church in the United States as reactionary, saying that ideology had replaced faith in some parts of it.[142][143][144] In November 2023 the Pope removed a conservative Texas bishop, Joseph E. Strickland of Tyler, Texas .[145]