posted March 31, 2008 08:35 PM            

quote:

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VATICAN CITY: The number of Muslims has overtaken the number of Roman Catholics in the world, a Vatican official said on Sunday.

Monsignor Vittorio Formenti, who compiled the Vatican’s 2008 yearbook, said Muslims made up 19.2% of the world’s population, and Catholics 17.4%. "For the first time in history we are no longer at the top: the Muslims have overtaken us," Formenti told Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano in an interview, saying the data referred to 2006.

He said that if all Christian groups were considered, including Orthodox churches, Anglicans and Protestants, then Christians made up 33% of the world’s population - or about 2 billion people. The Vatican recently put the number of Catholics in the world at 1.13 billion. It did not provide a figure for Muslims. But applying the percentages to the 2006 world population of about 6.5 billion, Muslims would have made up 1.25 billion.

The data on religious groups was generally known from other statistical sources but it was significant that the Vatican chose to draw attention to the numbers and what it sees as the causes behind them. Formenti said that while the number of Catholics as a proportion of the world’s population was fairly stable, the percentage of Muslims was growing because of higher birth rates.

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Wow - considering that. Will it really help if Obama becomes the president? I mean here is a good guy who happens to be black that people can look forward to a friend in the white house and same goes for other nations also who can finally trust an American president as they are speaking the same spiritual language. That will be a double whammy.

I think existence has its own way of choosing how it wants to repair its pain body. Whether it chooses to heal the pain body of millions of woman killed by roman catholics or whether it heals the pain body millions of african americans who were enslaved, no one knows. I am not saying these are the only pain bodies. What about pain body of the holocausts jews, or pain body of so many muslim people, etc? I am content to live in the knowing that each pain will be ultimately healed in its own time and its own way.

Whatever happens in existence is pristine and living and I trust and love that living energy

posted April 01, 2008 08:21 AM            

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What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world is immortal"~

posted April 01, 2008 09:17 AM            

Kidding. This is on National Geographic:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/03/080331-AP-islam-largest.html

If they are scratching their heads in the Vatican maybe they need to jump out onto the streets and ask the opinions of local people. Italy has one of the lowest birth rates in Europe. Why? They aren't going to find out by asking other celibate men.

Our local priest had a little moan about the priest shortage and the amount of work he has to do - I can't help you there, I said.

If you exclude 50% of the population (we're probably the majority as we live longer, but you know what I mean) then that is a logical conclusion.

The same principle goes if you exclude otherwise devout people from fully participating in services because they married in a registry office, married a protestant, got remarried after their parner left them and divorced them, etc, etc. They will go elsewhere where they feel more wanted.

posted April 01, 2008 09:20 AM            

quote:

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Italy has one of the lowest birth rates in Europe. Why? They aren't going to find out by asking other celibate men.

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Thank you for the link and the chuckle Blue Moon!!

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What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world is immortal"~

posted April 01, 2008 09:33 AM            

It gives reasons beyond "birth rates" for the increase.

quote:

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the faith reflects the increasingly diverse areas in which it is practiced.

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http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/10/1022_031022_islamdiversity.html

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What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world is immortal"~

posted April 01, 2008 01:47 PM            

I thank you.

~That article is good, juniperb.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4599905

Morning Edition, April 14, 2005 · Catholic-to-Protestant conversion has been growing dramatically in Latin America -- a region that is home to nearly half of the world's 1.1 billion Catholics. The next pope will need to be mindful of the appeal of more relaxed rules and energetic services of some Protestant religions.

posted April 02, 2008 09:46 AM            

All Faiths love the same God ( just don`t tell them that ) so the increase is happy news.... no matter what religious choice is made.

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What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world is immortal"~