Sunday, November 27, 2011

Is the Church falling apart?

According to the annual "Status of global mission" report produced ​​in 2011, the Catholic Church has one billion and 160 million faithful around the world, with 34,000 new people joining every day. The figures from the study, released by the agency Analisis Digirtal, say that there are two billion people in the world today, out of a total of approximately seven billion, who have never received the Gospel’s message. Another two billion and 680 million listen to it sometimes, or are vaguely aware of it, but they are not Christians.

"Despite the fact that Jesus Christ only founded one Church, and shortly before his death he prayed ‘that all would be one’ today there are many separate Christian denominations: at the beginning of the Twentieth century there were 1600; in 2011 there are 42,000," according to the study. The number of charismatic Protestants reaches 612 million. There are 426 million “classic” Protestants and this number is growing at a rate of 20,000 a day.

The Orthodox Churches count 271 million baptized believers and are joined by an additional five thousand a day. Anglicans, concentrated mainly in Africa and Asia, amount to 87 million, with three thousand more joining each day. Those which the study defines as "marginal Christians" (Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, those who do not recognize the divinity of Jesus or the Trinity) amount to 35 million and are growing at a rate of two thousand a day."The most common form of growth is to have many children and make them adhere to their religious tradition. Conversion is more uncommon, however there are millions of cases of this every year. The most common example, is one spouse converting to the faith of the other.” In 2011, Christians of all denominations will have spread more than 71 million Bibles around the world (there are already one billion and 741 million, some of which are clandestine). Each year, 409 thousand Christians set off to evangelize a country that is not their own, organized in 4800 different missionary organizations.
Marco Tosatti -- Rome

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