More Americans Say They Have No Religion

A wide-ranging study on American religious life found that the Roman Catholic population has been shifting out of the Northeast to the Southwest, the percentage of Christians in the nation has declined and more people say they have no religion at all.

Fifteen percent of respondents said they had no religion, an increase from 14.2 percent in 2001 and 8.2 percent in 1990, according to the American Religious Identification Survey.

Northern New England surpassed the Pacific Northwest as the least religious region, with Vermont reporting the highest share of those claiming no religion, at 34 percent. Still, the study found that the numbers of Americans with no religion rose in every state.

“No other religious bloc has kept such a pace in every state,” the study’s authors said.

In the Northeast, self-identified Catholics made up 36 percent of adults last year, down from 43 percent in 1990. At the same time, however, Catholics grew to about one-third of the adult population in California and Texas, and one-quarter of Floridians, largely due to Latino immigration, according to the research.

Nationally, Catholics remain the largest religious group, with 57 million people saying they belong to the church. The tradition gained 11 million followers since 1990, but its share of the population fell by about a percentage point to 25 percent.

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Blair a Secret Catholic At No10

Tony Blair was a secret Catholic throughout his years in office, according to one of his former advisers.

Lance Price, who was a Downing Street spokesman, recalled that, a year after being elected, Mr Blair asked him to ‘’squash” a report that he had told the Archbishop of Siena ”in my heart I feel more of a Catholic”.

Mr Price told the Today program on BBC Radio 4 that Mr Blair had told him, ”I don’t discuss my Catholicism with anybody.” He went on, ”I thought what he meant to say was, ‘I don’t discuss my Christianity with anybody.’ But looking back, I think, in his heart he was a Roman Catholic throughout the time that he was prime minister.” Mr Price was commenting on a program to be shown on BBC1 yesterday in which the former prime minister appears to express regret that he was not more open about his religion while at No10. In an interview for Christmas Voices, Mr Blair says, ”It would have caused such a palaver if I had done it while I was still in office.” But he admits most people would not have minded. ”Probably we could have been a little more adventurous on this without bringing the house down.”

Mr Blair, whose wife is a Catholic and whose children have been brought up in the faith, was received into the Church last December. Independent

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Bishops Encourage Multi-faith Prayer Rooms In Catholic Schools

A document issued by the Catholic Education Service said facilities for other faiths should be made available in all primary and secondary schools if possible.

Catholic schools in England and Wales should also consider adapting toilet facilities to accommodate ritual cleansing, the document said.

The guidance also said “respectful understanding” should be shown to pupils of other faiths who are withdrawn from or remain silent during Christian worship.

The advice – issued on behalf of the Catholic bishops of England and Wales – comes in response to new rules forcing all state schools to promote “community cohesion”.

Schools must foster race relations and religious tolerance to stop communities becoming divided.

It followed a warning from the Commission for Racial Equality that Britain’s segregated schools are “a ticking time bomb waiting to explode”.

In a document, the Catholic Church said around 30 per cent of pupils in Catholic schools were from other faiths or none.

The Most Rev Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Birmingham, and chairman of the Church’s education board, said: “Dialogue with other faiths is a consistent theme in the life of the Catholic Church. Such dialogue is conducted in many parishes and neighbourhoods, in colleges, universities and other academic circles.

“It has become increasingly important as the presence of other faith communities grows and becomes more evident in our society.”

The guidance said schools should consider putting aside a prayer room “if reasonably practicable” for use by staff and pupils from other faiths.

Existing toilet facilities might be adapted to accommodate individual ritual cleansing “which is sometimes part of religious lifestyle and worship”, it recommended.

It said schools should ensure “pupils’ health is attended to in times of fasting” – and canteens should take children’s religious dietary requirements into account.

In a further conclusion, schools with large numbers of non-Catholic students are advised to read out “messages of goodwill” at assemblies or send them directly to parents during religious ceremonies. This includes the Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu celebrations, the guidance said.

The new community cohesion duty was introduced after the Government shelved controversial plans to force all faith schools to admit at least a quarter of pupils from other religions.

The U-turn followed protests by the Catholic Church which said schools should not be “coerced” into the move. It insisted schools already admitted large numbers of pupils from other faiths.

Oona Stannard, chief executive of the Catholic Education Service, said: “I am confident that schools will find the new publication helpful as we live out our clear vision of Catholic education, increasingly undertaken with those of other faiths in our midst.”

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Catholic Priest – Refrain From Communion If You Voted For Obama

A South Carolina Roman Catholic priest has told his parishioners that they should refrain from receiving Holy Communion if they voted for Barack Obama because the Democratic president-elect supports abortion, and supporting him “constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil.”

The Rev. Jay Scott Newman said in a letter distributed Sunday to parishioners at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Greenville that they are putting their souls at risk if they take Holy Communion before doing penance for their vote.

“Our nation has chosen for its chief executive the most radical pro-abortion politician ever to serve in the United States Senate or to run for president,” Newman wrote, referring to Obama by his full name, including his middle name of Hussein.

“Voting for a pro-abortion politician when a plausible pro-life alternative exists constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil, and those Catholics who do so place themselves outside of the full communion of Christ’s Church and under the judgment of divine law. Persons in this condition should not receive Holy Communion until and unless they are reconciled to God in the Sacrament of Penance, lest they eat and drink their own condemnation.”

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