The Catholic Fertility Crisis: Do They Only Have Two Generations Left?!

In this eye-opening video, Malcolm and Simone Collins delve into the startling fertility decline within the Catholic Church, both in the United States and globally. Through a comprehensive analysis of survey data and demographic trends, they uncover the shocking reality that Catholic fertility rates have fallen below replacement levels, and even devout Catholics are using contraception and obtaining abortions at rates similar to non-religious individuals. The couple explores the potential causes of this phenomenon, including delayed marriage, the influence of the urban monoculture, and the disconnect between the Church's teachings and the behavior of its adherents. They also discuss the theological debate surrounding the beginning of life and the impact of the celibate priesthood on the Church's ability to provide relevant guidance on relationships and family formation. Throughout the video, Malcolm and Simone offer thought-provoking insights and propose potential solutions to revitalize the Catholic Church and ensure its survival in the face of this fertility crisis.

[00:00:00]

Malcolm Collins: Needed fertility is the fertility rate that you would need to have to stay stable. As a cultural group, when you account for the percentage of people who deconvert from your religion per generation. On the other hand, Catholic churches will see appreciable decline.

He says that they have 1. 9 children but these don't separate out the Hispanic Catholic population. the TFR for non-Hispanic, white Catholic women in the United States is 1.64,

anyway so he thinks it's 1. 9 which it really isn't. Children born per woman is nowhere near enough to offset the rates of conversion out of these faiths, yielding a needed fertility rate for Roman Catholics of 3. 1. Whoa. Therefore these churches, and this is with the inflated 1.

9 number, that's including the Hispanic population. Okay. A 40 percent decline in the next generation.

Simone Collins: Wow.

Malcolm Collins: Catholics view that life begins at conception the problem with this view is that by the statistics, it doesn't really appear to impact the rate that Catholics [00:01:00] use contraception or get abortions very highly.

We'll go over the survey data right here. let's go for non religious affiliation.

And so they must be doing it like way more than Catholics, right? Morning after pill. Presumably. No, 33 percent to 35%

Simone Collins: Hold on, all of this gets worse.

It's just gonna be like a, oh, and it gets worse! How can this possibly get worse? We just learned that Catholics have abortions at rates similar to those who are not Catholic.

Malcolm Collins: I know what people are thinking.

They're thinking. Okay, but this is just lumping all Catholics into one group. What if we divide Catholics by how religious they are? Simone, before we go further, I got more stats for you here. You've got to be kidding me. It can't

Simone Collins: get any worse. Oh, it

Malcolm Collins: gets worse.

Every stat here is this situation is more catastrophic than you could have imagined.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: .

Hello. This is Malcolm and Simone Collins. We are so excited to be here with you today. And I am excited to be talking to you today, Simone, because this is going to be an episode our fans are going to [00:02:00] love because the. Stat heavy fertility episodes always do spectacular.

Ooh, we're looking at here some terrifying numbers. Oh, really? Yeah.

Simone Collins: Oh, no. Yes.

Malcolm Collins: So I have mentioned before that Catholics have a lower fertility rate than non Catholics when you control for income and that Catholic countries. Seem to be hit by fertility collapse a lot faster and harder than other countries.

For example, the average European Catholic majority country has a fertility rate of only 1. 3. And then you have the rapid declines in fertility across Latin America. With examples like Uruguay in just the past seven years going from an above replacement fertility rate to only around 1. 3. Argentina, if you're looking at the four year olds who are entering kindergarten this year there is going to be 30 percent less than just four years ago.

You look at Costa Rica where a local demographer used the term vertiginous to describe their fertility situation and local [00:03:00] women have below one fertility right now. So just. Absolutely catastrophic. But what has always been said to me is for whatever reason, this is not true of American Catholics.

Okay. Is that true? I, I idly decided I had taken it as a fact because so many people had told me this. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Sounds like it might be true. The Catholics that we know have a lot of kids, so it. Seems to totally check out

Malcolm Collins: of the prenatals movement. There are a number of Catholic the thought leaders in the movement.

So I was like, okay. But, and I will also note of the prenatalist Catholics that I know of they fall into two categories of, they are either weirdly unmarried and childless younger people or married with a lot of kids, older people. But the unique thing about the Catholics in the prenatalist movement is that when they are younger, they are much more likely to be unmarried.

Now, I'll get to this because this actually is what the statistics would [00:04:00] suggest we would find. So I decided to Google this. What is the TFR of Catholics in the USA? And I will put the results on screen here.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: The very first result is It, the AI review of the literature. Okay. Which says in 2023, the total fertility rate for Catholics in the United States was just over 1.6.

Ah. But then I go down and I find a study that looks into this, right? Yeah. So the TFR for non-Hispanic, white Catholic women in the United States is 1.64,

Simone Collins: as of

Malcolm Collins: does

Simone Collins: it give a year?

Malcolm Collins: This is the terrifying thing. It does. This study was done in, 1992. Ah!

Simone Collins: Oh no.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so it's almost certainly below that now.

Simone Collins: Yeah, because I haven't seen in any instance, there have been tiny improvements, but not any crazy bounce backs. So we can't expect it to have gone up significantly if it's, , and

Malcolm Collins: it is MUCH lower than the Protestant fertility rate.

Really? In the same study, the [00:05:00] average Protestant fertility rate was 1. 91. So 1. 64 for Catholics. Now, if these numbers are correct, it means the average Catholic fertility rate in the United States is below the average fertility rate in the United States. What on Earth? But we'll go into more data here, because I Okay.

Yeah, this is really neat. Okay, maybe it's being offset by these ultra religious Catholics that we're hearing about. Because I keep hearing about these hypothetical ultra pro family, ultra religious Catholics. And the stats are, basically show that they don't we'll get to them in just a second.

One is an article actually written by a Catholic for Catholics. The alarming fertility decline among Catholic women. So first we need to note something. What we're seeing right now, and I'm gonna read some quotes here, uh, from the study that was looking at this, that they say, this contrast was the pattern during the baby boom era where Catholics had a higher fertility than Protestants.

The authors state