Christopher F. Rufo  ⚔️

I do not understand the @SohrabAhmari / @DouthatNYT disagreement on the future "Catholic" character of American religion: PRLS 2014 data is abundantly clear that Catholic net conversion rates are abysmally low.

Rates of apostasy out of Catholicism are pretty normal, but conversion rates into Catholicism are unusually low for Christian traditions, lower even than many Mainlines.

While it's true that Catholicism is a popular conversion destination for disaffected highly educated theologically conservative Protestants, and that group is loud and well-represented in the media, it's like 13 humans in the entire country.

Without immigration, the Catholicism would be declining even faster than the mainlines. That's the unavoidable conclusion from RCC's own data on baptisms as well.

And, to be clear, it's not because of unusually high rates of people leaving the church. It's because of peculiarly low rates of conversion *into* the church.