News to terrify right-wing freaks: Muslims more numerous than Catholics

[marmar]

from AP, via Yahoo!:



Muslims more numerous than Catholics
By ALESSANDRA RIZZO, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 26 minutes ago



VATICAN CITY - Islam has surpassed Roman Catholicism as the world's largest religion, the Vatican newspaper said Sunday.

"For the first time in history, we are no longer at the top: Muslims have overtaken us," Monsignor Vittorio Formenti said in an interview with the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano. Formenti compiles the Vatican's yearbook.

He said that Catholics accounted for 17.4 percent of the world population — a stable percentage — while Muslims were at 19.2 percent.

"It is true that while Muslim families, as is well known, continue to make a lot of children, Christian ones on the contrary tend to have fewer and fewer," the monsignor said.

Formenti said that the data refer to 2006. The figures on Muslims were put together by Muslim countries and then provided to the United Nations, he said, adding that the Vatican could only vouch for its own data.

When considering all Christians and not just Catholics, Christians make up 33 percent of the world population, Formenti said.

Spokesmen for the Vatican and the United Nations did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment Sunday.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080330/ap_on_re_eu/vatican_muslims

[BlooInBloo]

1. Sure to terrify white folks everywhere.

[Zynx]

7. Nah, no stereotyping there at all.

[Name removed]

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[WritersBlock]

6. That's a pretty harsh accusation.. could you point us to more information on that, please? n/t

[classof56]

4. This almost begs for the Cheney response: "So?"

Maybe it's just me, but I can't figure why this should be of concern. I am sure, however, that my Catholic relatives will jump on this to reinforce their fear of that Muslim Obama be elected president. And I'm pretty sure they figure we'll all soon be required to roll out the prayer shawl and bow toward Mecca five times a day. I clearly recall when JFK was elected, my Baptist pastor telling us from the pulpit that presidential term limits would soon be done away with, we'd all be genuflecting and we'd get our marching orders directly from the Pope. I am now a former Baptist, can't handle that rhetoric anymore although I gave it about 40 years more than I probably should have, and right now I find myself fervently wishing religion would just go away where politics is concerned. I know, I know--Muslims caused 911 and they want to kill everyone who doesn't convert to Islam. Or so I've been told. It's all so disconcerting and depressing. My thought is, if there is a God, whatever iteration, I would really like it is he/she would put an end to all this rancor and give us (me) a reason to believe.

Tired Old Cynic

[selador]

5. kind of misleading

roman catholicism is not A religion.

it's a subset of a religion - specifically christianity.

so, this article seems to start from a flawed premise (that roman catholicism is a religion), that necessarily then leads to a flawed conclusion.

sure, muslims outnumber roman catholics. they don't outnumber christians.

if they are going to differentiate into roman catholics AS a religion, they might as well differentiate sunni, shiite, etc.

i realize that SOME christians (pretty extreme ones) don't consider catholics "real christians" and might consider it a different religion, etc.

but the general consensus is that catholicism, protestantism, greek orthodox, etc. are ALL christians.

mormonism would at least be a little more arguable, at least in that there is far less consensus.

not to get all semantical, but most people would say - if it's a jesus thang, it's a christian thang. that is pretty much THE deciding factor as to what is and isn't christianity. muslims say jesus was kewl, and a prophet and all that fwiw, iirc. but not the whole son of god thang

[slampoet]

8. More Muslims than Catholics and both of them hate the Right Wing.

well at least the followers......

[Zynx]

9. Pick your allies carefully.

[slampoet]

10. Typical.

There are more than two sides.

[usaftmo]

11. From what I've seen and experienced,

the Catholic faith and right-wingers are in bed together.

The reason I say that is that the Catholics have rules to live by...which are fine if one lives in fantasy-land...which doesn't do anything for me.