Roman Catholicism in the United States or Catholicism has flourished since its colonial era, previous to the establishment of the nation. The Catholic Church in the United States is the largest Christian denomination in the nation, with 76.9 million people professing the faith in 2003, making it the third-largest Catholic population in the world after Brazil and Mexico. Approximately 26% of the American population is Catholic, it is four times the size of the next largest denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention.

The Church's governing body in the United States is the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, made up of the hierarchy of bishops and archbishops of the United States and the U.S. Virgin Islands, although each bishop is independent in his own diocese, answerable only to the Pope.

No primate for Catholics exists in the United States. The Archdiocese of Baltimore, the first diocese established in the country, received Prerogative of Place in the 1850s, which confers to its archbishop a subset of the leadership responsibilities granted to primates in other countries.

Statistics

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Over 19,000 parishes exist in 195 dioceses or archdioceses:

• 146 Latin Catholic Dioceses
• 2 Eastern Catholic Archdioceses or Archeparchies
• 15 Eastern Catholic Dioceses or Eparchies

This gives the Catholic Church the third highest total number of churches in the U.S., behind Southern Baptists and Methodists. However, because the average parish is significantly larger than the average church from those denominations, there are about 2.5 times as many Catholics as Southern Baptists and almost 5 times as many as Methodists.

The Church has over 30,000 diocesan priests, and over 15,000 priests vowed to a specific order; also over 30,000 lay ministers, 13,000 deacons, 75,000 sisters, and 5,600 brothers.

150,000 Catholic school teachers operate in the United States, teaching 2.7 million students.

There are about 60-70 million people in the United States who were baptized as Catholics, or roughly 26% of the U.S. population.As of 2002, a Pew Research poll found that roughly 24% of the adult U.S. population self-identifies as Catholic.[http://pewforum.org/publications/reports/poll2002.pdf (Note that due to conversion, the number that have ever been baptized will generally be higher than the number who self-identify. Additionally, Catholics have a higher than average birth rate, so have a distribution skewed towards non-adults.) Other estimates from recent years generally range around 20% to 28%. Catholics in the U.S. are about 6% of the church's total worldwide membership.

A poll by The Barna Group in 2004 found Catholic ethnicity to be 60% white (commonly called Caucasian, 31% Hispanic, 4% Black, and 5% other ethnicity.^*

Roman Catholicism by State

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Rank	State	Catholic Population (%)	Largest Denomination
1	Rhode Island	52	Roman Catholicism
2	Massachusetts	47
3	New Mexico	41
=4	New Jersey	39
=4	Vermont	39
6	New York	38
7	New Hampshire	35
=8	California	34
=8	Connecticut	34
10	Arizona	31
11	Illinois	30
=12	Louisiana	30	Baptist
=12	North Dakota	30	Lutheran
=14	Texas	29	Roman Catholicism
=14	Wisconsin	29
16	Nebraska	28
17	Pennsylvania	27
18	Florida	26
=19	Maine	25
=19	Minnesota	25	Lutheran
=19	South Dakota	25
=22	Colarado	24	Roman Catholicism
=22	Hawaii	24
=22	Montana	24
=22	Nevada	24
=26	Iowa	23
=26	Maryland	23
=26	Michigan	23
29	Washington	22	Other Protestant
=30	Kansas	20
=30	Missouri	20
=32	Indiana	19
=32	Ohio	19
34	Wyoming	18
=35	Idaho	15
=35	Kentucky	15	Baptist
=35	Oregon	15	Other Protestant
38	Virginia	14	Baptist
39	Alabama	13
=40	Delaware	10	Methodist
=40	North Carolina	10	Baptist
42	Georgia	8
=43	Alaska	7
=43	Arkansas	7
=43	Oklahoma	7
=43	South Carolina	7
=47	Tennessee	6
=47	Utah	6	Latter-day Saint
=49	Mississippi	N/A	Baptist
=49	West Virginia

History

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Catholicism first came to the territories now forming the United States with the Spanish explorers and settlers in present-day Florida (1513) and the southwest. The first Christian worship service held in the current United States was a Catholic Mass celebrated in St. Augustine, Florida. The influence of the Alta California missions (1769 and onwards) forms a lasting memorial to part of this heritage.

Catholicism received a boost with the settling of Maryland (1634): this colony offered a rare example of the Catholic-oriented religious toleration in a fairly intolerant age, particularly amongst other English plantations which frequently exhibited a quite militant Protestantism. (See the Maryland Toleration Act, and note the pre-eminence of the Archdiocese of Baltimore in Catholic circles.) However, at the time of the American Revolution, Catholics formed less than 1 % of the population of the thirteen colonies.

Subsequent mass-immigration -- especially of Catholics from Ireland, Germany, southern Europe (Italy, Portugal), Poland, the Philippines, and Latin America -- has impacted the flavor of Catholicism in the United States. Some anti-immigrant movements, like the Know Nothings and the Ku Klux Klan, have also been anti-Catholic.

In the latter half of the 19th century, the first attempt at standardizing discipline in the American Church occurred with the convocation of the Plenary Councils of Baltimore.

Dioceses

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• US Catholic Bishops
• US Catholic Cathedrals
• US Catholic Dioceses

External links

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• Global Catholic Statistics: 1905 and Today by Albert J. Fritsch, SJ, PhD
• Largest Religious Groups in the United States of America

American culture | Christian denominations of North America | Catholic Church by country | Catholic Church in North America | Roman Catholicism in the United States

Katholische Kirche in den USA | Chiesa cattolica negli Stati Uniti d'America