2006-08-30 06:02:44 · 4 answers · asked by Charlie H 1 in Society & Culture ➔ Religion & Spirituality
--Is Catholic--
That actually depends on who is counting. There is a difference between self-reported numbers such as the census and internal numbers because of the different understanding of Catholic. The Church counts all baptized Catholics as Catholics. You are counted as Roman Catholic if you are confirmed by a Roman Rite Bishop.
If we look at this website
http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/diocese/daust.html
we find that in the Diocese of Austin (which goes beyond the city of Austin) there are, as of 2004, 401,842 Catholics who belong to this diocese. I am not sure of if this number refers to baptized or confirmed as the site does not say. However, I know that it is only Roman Rite and does not include those Catholics who have moved into or out of the diocese but have not updated the parish records.
Exact headcounts of any religious organization are terribly difficult things, and often the numbers from one religion are not readily comparable to another because the method for counting heads is different as well as the quality of records (removal of those that have died, those that have moved, etc.)
2006-08-30 17:43:11 · answer #1 · answered by Liet Kynes 5 · 2⤊ 0⤋
According to the diocesean website, Austin has 26 parishes. The profile of each parish has the population of the church is families. After some back clicks and some number crunching, Austin has an estimate of 40,497 Catholic families. An average family has about four members, so a good estimate for the total amount of Catholics in Austin is 161,988. This is probably a canservative number since Catholic families usually have more than 2 kids, and Austin is like the second growing city in the USA.
So the final score: 161,988
2006-08-30 14:10:50 · answer #2 · answered by freemanbac 5 · 1⤊ 0⤋
If you are actually interested in this, and don't mind spending a little time to learn, I can point you in the right direction in using the US Census databases (free and available to the public online) in order to answer your question.
(We're talking about you being interested enough to spend 30mins, to an hour)
2006-08-30 13:09:51 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Your casting a pretty big net, are you not?
2006-08-30 13:05:48 · answer #4 · answered by Celeste P 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋