Roman Catholics: Counting the Flock

More Roman Catholics are being born than made: there are nearly a million more in the U.S. than a year ago, but just 125,670 are new converts, fewer than at any time in a decade. The 1963 Official Catholic Directory, a 7-lb., 1,540-page volume released last week, puts the Catholic population in the U.S. at 43,851,538 baptized church members, 23.3% of the whole U.S. population. That total marks a dramatic 44.1% increase in ten years. The largest concentration of Catholics is in the archdioceses of Chicago (2,293,900), Boston (1,733,620) and New York (1,704,350). Ordained Catholic priests number 56,540.

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TOMMY WARD, whose family has been harvesting oysters from the Gulf of Mexico since the 1920s, on the FDA's plan to ban the sale of raw oysters that are harvested in warm months; about 15 people die each year due to raw-oyster contamination
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TOMMY WARD, whose family has been harvesting oysters from the Gulf of Mexico since the 1920s, on the FDA's plan to ban the sale of raw oysters that are harvested in warm months; about 15 people die each year due to raw-oyster contamination

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