In the Straight Dope column about Islam Cecil says, “For comparison, there are 1.9 billion Christians worldwide, most of them Catholics.”
This may be just a nitpick, but according to David Barrett’s World Christian Encyclopedia, the standard source of religous membership statistics, “A little over one half of the world’s Christians are Catholic, about 53%. About 11% belong to the very similar Orthodox churches. Together Catholics and Orthodox believers are about 63% of the Christian population.”
Orthodox religions don’t recognise the pope, so not sure whether you can lump them in with “real” Catholics or not*. As an epidemiologist who was raised a Protestant, I take issue with “a little over one half” being generalised into “most.”
*Come to think of it, I’m not sure *what * constitutes a “real” Catholic. Most people I know who identify themselves as Catholic are not practicing any more than I am a practicing Protestant. Unless you count accepting Christmas presents and colouring Easter eggs. I’m a big believer in those.
JillGat – there are two meanings to the word “Catholic.” The one we in the west are most familiar with really should be modified and called “Roman Catholic.” There are other offshoots from the ancient Christian church who consider themselves to be Catholic, but do not recognize the primacy of the bishop of Rome. This includes the Egyptian and Ethiopian Copts, the Nestorians, and all the various Orthodox churches. In that sense, most Christians are, indeed, Catholic.
oh, I hit the send button too late and for some reason “edit” won’t work. I was going to say, “but in all seriousness, Copts make up about 10% of Egypt’s population.” And I haven’t checked on Ethiopia’s lately, and am too lazy to go look it up on www.adherents.com, but I’ll bet most of them are at least nominally Ethiopian Coptic. It’s an interesting religion. They claim to have been founded by St. Mark in Alexandria (the main “St. Peter’s” so to speak, in Cairo, is called St. Mark’s cathedral), and there have been Baigent & Leigh-style speculations that the Ark of the Covenant is in a monastery on an island in a lake way in the uplands of Scot…er, I mean, Ethiopia.
I’m on medical leave now, but when I was at work, my regular taxi driver (for whenever I needed to go from my office to the airport) was an Ethiopian Copt; when I gave blood at the Red Cross, occasionally I’d get a nurse who was E.C., and I knew a cartography prof at U of New Brunswick in Fredericton once who was Egyptian Copt. Oh, and I know an Egyptian Copt here in Edmonton who converted to Mormonism. She’s a petroleum geologist, so this is the place to be for that kind of thing.
