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AP,

I am not as convinced as I may have sounded in commenting on the Melkite situation in Argentina that the stats for my Church are any more accurate than those for any other. However, there is a significant caveat to be taken as regards the 1962 stats. In 1962, there were no canonically erected Melkite or Maronite jurisdictions in the diaspora and all such would have been counted among the Latins in both North and South America, as well as elsewhere.

The numbers in South America for many of the Churches represented there are staggering in comparison to North America. A few years ago, when Sayednah Fares (Maakaroun) of the Brazilian Melkite Eparchy was in the US to attend Archbishop Cyril's enthronement, I specifically asked him about the numbers attributed to his jurisdiction.

The essence of his reply was that the census figures for it, and most of the other EC/OC jurisdictions throughout the continent, were reasonably accurate. He did, however, acknowledge that substantial numbers in all the Churches there were unserved, as the numbers of temples and clergy were woefully inadequate to meet the pastoral needs. This suggests to me that those figures represent, in large measure, EC and OC faithful who have already been lost to the Latins or even to Catholicism, given the growth of non-Catholic churches across the continent, particularly evengelical Protestants. I suspect that same is true as regards the Orthodox Churches in those areas.

Many years,

Neil

The involvement by EC and OC hierarchs in the US in a joint working group within the USCCB (the name for which eludes me at the moment) is a hopeful sign for the interaction that Michael and Shadow would like to see (as would I). Presumably, the Eparchs are getting to better know one another.

There are also instances of "networking" at lower levels. Deacon Ed Faulk has spoken of the EC Pastoral Association of Southern California, which brings together representatives of the several Churches in Southern Cal. A link posted elsewhere here within the past few days, to the UGCC's Patronage parish in the Baltimore area, shows evidence of interaction among the various parishes - Byzantine Rite and otherwise - in the DC Metro area.

Many years,

Neil

The numbers must be registered parishioners, rather than regular Sunday worshipers?

An accurate count of attenders , would I'm sure make very interesting reading

If we counted those who actually go to church those figures I suspect would tumble.

The church I attend was packed for Christmas Liturgy. The following Sunday we were back to a church full of old people again.

Nationally here in Australia, which does have congregation counts each year, we have attendence down to about 16%.

Pavel, what's the problem with us old people ?

james

Well, I fear that almost all of these are lost already to the Eastern Churches.

The Armenian Catholics claim to have 12,000 faithful in Latin America and Mexico and 16,000 in Argentina but these two eparchies have only 3 parishes and 2 priests between them.

For the 1.1 million Maronites claimed for Latin America (which I still think is grossly exaggerated) there are two eparchies, 3 bishops, 14 parishes and 39 priests (24 of them religious -- I wonder what religious order they belong to).

The Melkites claim 418,000 faithful in their Brazilian eparchy, which has 2 bishops, 5 parishes, and 11 priests.

The Ukrainians are faring much better -- 322,000 faithful claimed in 2 Latin America eparchies and served by 6 bishops, 43 parishes and 93 priests (67 of them religious -- Basilians?). However, I suspect that the figure of 322,000 already takes into account leakage to Roman Catholicism, Ukrainian Orthodoxy, Protestantism and cultism (very widespread in Brazil).

Coming to North America, I too feel quite alarmed at the huge losses sustained by Eastern Churches there. Canada claims that Ukrainians comprise its fourth largest ethnicity, but the stats for both the UGCC and the UOCC (which, combined, have not more than a hundred thousand members in Canada) there are miniscule compared to the millions said to have Ukrainian descent. I would assume, though, that many (most?) UGCC Ukrainians in Canada are now de facto Latins, and that at least a few thousand Ukrainians are with th various Russian Orthodox Churches rather than UOCC (see, for example, Met. Hilarion Kapral)

As for the Russians, it is said that 3 million US citizens are of Russian descent, and that 700,000 Americans still speak Russian at home. Granted that majority of Russian immigrants to the US were Jews fleeing from czarist pogroms, not Orthodox, the Russian Orthodox churches in the USA combined (I include OCA) probably do not have more than a hundred thousand parishioners of Russian descent, and in ROCOR's case many of these are recent immigrants.

I've noted, though, that the recent waves of Coptic immigrants to the west are forming very strong and solid communities, capable of supporting many parishes with daily or frequent weekday services / Liturgies.

Shlomo Lkhoolkhoon,

The reason that the Maronite numbers do not jive, is that most of us will join a Latin Church than work to establish a Maronite one. We should have an eparchy in Sweden but we don't since we will not work to establish one. There should be one in Ecuador but we have the same situation.

I will go further into this, but I have to go now.

Fush BaShlomo Lkhoolkhoon,
Yuhannon

I'll answer this one , since my experience is the same as Pavel's.

There's nothing wrong with us old people - we still go to Church .

The question is - where are the young folk ??

Why have they grown away from the Church ?

For Nativity I would reckon we had about 200 present - and the very next Sunday back down to the 'normal' 40 -50

pilgrim,

It's actually worse than you suggest. Although AP reports two parishes in the Exarchate for Latin America & Mexico, served by one religious priest, I have not been able to document any presbyteral presence in Mexico. Periodic pastoral visitations are made by the Exarch, who serves a dual role as Eparch of the Brazilian jurisdiction. The information that I've been able to obtain has him celebrating the Soorp Badarak at a Latin Church in Mexico City on those occasions. See here.

The second church in the Exarchate (which I'm guessing is the location of the priest) is the Co-Cathedral of the Exarchate - sited in Uruguay. The Argentinian Eparchy does report 3 seminarians.


Actually, if one includes Mexico, there are 3 eparchies, 4 bishops, 17 parishes, and 43 priests - of whom 28 are religious, 3 deacons, and 2 seminarians - serving a population of 1.3 million. There are also Maronite parishes existing outside eparchial bounds in Uruguay, Santo Domingo, and Colombia, although I don't know what the statistics are for those.

As regards the religious clergy, I suspect that the majority are members of the Congregation of Lebanese Maronite Missionaries. Shawn may be able to shed more light on that.


As well, there are an additional 330,000 counted among the Eparchy of Mexico and the Exarchates of Argentina and Venezuela. Those jurisdictions enumerate 2 bishops and 9 parishes, served by 4 eparchial clergy and 7 religious priests, as well as 2 deacons and 5 seminarians. Although the Mexican Eparchy has been long underserved, a serious effort has been made in the past two years to remedy that situation.

It would be interesting to hear from Bernardo, our Melkite member in Mexico, as to the success of those endeavors. From what I know, the body of religious clergy in the Latin American jurisdictions draws from all four of the religious congregations that serve the Melkite Church - Basilian Salvatorians, Aleppines, and Chouerites, as well as the Society of Missionaries of St Paul.


I believe you're correct in thinking that the Basilians represent most, if not all, of the religious priests in Latin America.

As to other jurisdictions south of the US border, the Syriacs have a Venezuelan Exarchate numbering about 4,000 faithful. It has a bishop, but only 3 secular priests to serve 11 parishes.

The Russian Catholics have two active communities in Argentina (as well as a third, inactive, last I knew) and a parish in Brazil.


Are you using "Coptic" generically, to include the Ethiopians and Eritreans?

The Eritreans certainly have a strong presence in North America - see here. However, as I noted in an earlier post, they are very underserved as regards regular pastoral care, with some visited by clergy on no regular schedule, others as infrequently as twice annually, and probably only a fourth of them on any regular basis. The number of established communities in Canada is smaller, but the communities there seem to have at least a regular schedule of priestly visitation, thanks entirely to the clergy of the Toronto parish, who apparently ride the circuit regularly.

Ethiopian congregations are many fewer in number in the US, but the majority are pastorally served.

I consider neglect of the Eritreans to be particularly egregious because, let's face it, two dozen active communities is a large number to ignore. It took me only a couple of weeks to find and document their locations for the Directory - and I had to do it pretty much from scratch. Reference to their existence is often found only on sites written in their language and rarely on the sites of Latin dioceses in which they reside.

Yet, although my linguistic skills don't extend to Tigrinyan, I was able to track them down. The schedule of US pastoral visits by their hierarchs demonstrates that they too are aware of these pockets, but I don't see meaningful evidence that efforts are being made by much of anyone - Ethiopian or Latin - to afford them long-term, dedicated pastoral care.

Just as a side note, the Eritreans - who are that rarity, a country with only Eastern/Oriental canonical jurisdictions - are reported to have established some missions for Catholics in Somalia (admittedly a relatively small number of people), suggesting that, in time, Catholicism in that troubled country may be practiced according to the Alexandrian Rite.

As regards the Copts themselves, there are only two parishes in the US - one on each side of the continent, and two additional in Canada. When the Coptic Catholic Patriarch visited Chicago a few years ago, the Coptic community there is said to have lobbied for a priest and parish, without success.

Many years,

Neil

How can the Slovak Greek Catholic Eparchy of Sts. Cyril and Methodius, Toronto, Ontario go from
2000: 20,000 people
2005: 5,000 people
2007: 25,000 people
2008: 25,000 people

Verily a 15,000 decrease in membership in 5 years BUT a 20,000 increase in membership in two years. I'm not believing and seriously if it is a typo then the editor needs written up by his boss.

It is possible that in any census there is an undercount, in know that in the Scandinavian lands there are many more Catholics which show up on the official statistics simply because they do not register.
Stephanos I

Matt,

A glance at these figures for the Slovak Eparchy, covering various years from 1990 to now, will demonstrate that census counts - or typing - are not someone's forte - whether in Toronto or Rome I don't know.

The numbers reported by Father Robeson are, however, an accurate transcription of those in AP (I double-checked against the Catholic Hierarchy site and David Cheney over there is reporting identical figures.)

1990 30,000
1995 30,000
1999 20,000
2000 20,000
2002 7,500
2003 1,500
2004 5,000
2005 5,000
2006 2,500
2007 25,000
2008 25,000

I have no idea which is the most accurate representation of the Eparchy's true number of faithful, but I'm inclined to doubt that there are any 20,000 to 25,000. My money is on 5,000 to 7,500.

Many years,

Neil

Yes.

Statistics vascilate in their accuacy.

Anyone who could invent an accurate way to count membership could make a mint... At least if they marketed properly to those who would have an interest in tossing about these numbers.

Rolls get updated, get purged, get inflated... I stand by my assertion that across the board ethnic churches in a post-ethnic nation (among ethnicities not immigrating with the gusto they did 50+ years ago)are falling. They are falling as original members die, second, third, fourth gen identify less with the ethnicity and church related thereto.

I am inclined to believe that whenever drops are reported, it is generally a more accurate reflection of the state of Eastern Christianity than when numbers go unchanged for long periods...

If a certain US jurisdiction that routinely reports having 1M+ members finally came out and started using the statistics proposed and suggested by one of its own priests in an internal report, the question would not be, where did the other 970K members go... It would be, "Why did we hold on to numbers that did not reflect the reality of active membership for so long?"

One much respected priest wrote in a now famous letter the following:



There should be several million more Eastern Christians in the US... I would say decline is across the board.

What has become of the massive Slovak Greek Catholic cathedral? Is it still closed?