Catholics: How do you explain vast majorities of certain racial groups rejecting God?

Question

Doing the racial breakdown of the College of Cardinals, I find 83% of all Cardinals are of European ancestry, 7% are of African ancestry, 7% are of East Asian ancestry and only 1% are of East Indian ancestry (and are obviously descended from the Brahmin caste).

This would suggest to me that, assuming these numbers match the number of people from each racial group who call Catholicism their faith, that there are -very- few non-Europeans who embrace Catholicism.

The alternative assumption is that the Catholic Church does not believe in matching large numbers of non-European Catholics with large numbers of non-European Cardinals. This would suggest the church is biased against non-white racial groups, a suggestion I am told can't be true.

Assuming you also believe Catholicism is the only true religion worshipping God, then one must conclude that the vast majority of non-Europeans are rejecting God.

How do you explain this?

Answer 1

I think you are a bit misinformed.

One example:

The 270 million Catholics of African descent represent about 25% of the one billion Roman Catholics throughout the world in more than 59 countries.

Most Black Catholics are in Africa.

However there are about 3 million in the United States.

Black Catholic statistics: http://www.nbccongress.org/black-catholics/worldwide-count-black-catholics-01.asp

Here is a link to the National Black Catholic Congress: http://www.nbccongress.org/default.asp

With love in Christ.

Answer 2

A couple of caveats:
1. I would suggest that priests (even cardinals) are not immune to prejudice.
2. Just because a person isn't Catholic doesn't mean they reject God. That is a part of Catholic doctrine.

As for explanation, I'd say it's probably true that a higher percentage of Europeans are Catholic than, say, Asians. Also, higher theological education is likely to be more readily available in Europe than, for example, Brazil. Whether these are enough to account for the perceived differences, I can't say.