Audio By Carbonatix
Recently, my friend, the Evangelical social commentator Aaron Renn, boosted a year-old article from the indispensable X account, @MoreBirths. The article by Daniel Hess was about the cratering birthrates in formerly Catholic countries. This is notable because Catholics were the holdout among Christian churches, maintaining the church’s teaching that artificial birth control was sinful. Catholics, especially where they were living side-by-side with Protestants, were often distinguished by their outstanding fertility well into the mid-to-late 20th century.
With 2024 nearly complete, we have fertility numbers for the first three quarters of the year, and for majority-Catholic countries, the numbers are bad. The total fertility rate for Poland was 1.11 births per woman, for Spain it was 1.12, and for Italy it was 1.18. In Chile, fertility crashed to just 0.88 births per woman, a 22% drop in a year. In the historically fecund Philippines, fertility fell 23% in one year to 1.40. For reference, replacement level is 2.1.
The numbers go hand-in-hand with statistics showing mass disaffection from religious practice and identification in these countries. Formerly Catholic strongholds seem to fall almost instantly, in a single generation. Starting in the 1960s, it was Quebec. Then in the 1980s and 90s, Ireland. Now in the 2010s–2020s, Poland. But the declines in South America are also shocking since they are so dramatic. Is there any hope?
There are subcultures within Catholicism that are much more traditionalist, and these groups have higher birthrates. For example, Pew found in 2015 that the fertility rate among those attending Traditional Latin Mass was 3.6 births per woman, far above the 2.3 among those attending the modern version (below replacement today).
Among Catholics generally, the most devout have the highest fertility. This means that in many places, Catholics can still be found with big families and there are networks of such families in many US cities.
But they are only minority of all Catholics.
Not really. The percentage of Catholics falling away is much larger and falling away much faster than the small percentage of Trads, converts, and their children can counteract. The future of the Catholic church in most Western countries is going to be one of institutional collapse, parishes sold to real-estate developers, colleges mothballed, seminaries consolidated, and small monasteries giving up the ghost. This institutional collapse will also put a strain on the faithful remnant, both financially and in morale.
