The thread where you couldn't be bothered posting the article

[Svartalf]

I'll believe it when AA gives him his 5year badge, or when he dies, which ever comes first.

[Scot Dutchy]

He is giving up drinking the stuff...

[JimC]

But what about Keith Richards from the Rolling stones?

[Scot Dutchy]

He is the one we are talking about? He has stopped bothering to drink the stuff just get it mainlined.

[pErvinalia]

[Scot Dutchy]

One born...

[JimC]

They're a bit different over in Western Australia...

[Scot Dutchy]

A report has come out today that church attendance is down to 9%. Only the extreme protestants have maintained their numbers. The catholic church has lost the most.

Church attendance is defined as attending a place of worship at least once a month.

[Svartalf]

well, I don't know whether and how they take count of church attendance here, but I'm definitely nowhere on the rolls... can't be assed to cross the street and get bored for an hour in the church across... wasted enough time in there already.

[Scot Dutchy]

If you are baptised as a catholic you will still be counted as one which says bugger all. Muslims have the same problem; once a muslim always one which why actual numbers are hard to quantify.
We have in a city of almost 600,000 two protestant churches which fully function as churches. I live across the road from one. The numbers I see going in on a normal sunday are roughly 10-20. How it keeps going is quite amazing. It rents out rooms for discussion groups and meetings. There is one catholic one which I hear on sunday.
If they cant find a priest, vicar, pastor they are often turned into places of meditation. They cant sell them as nobody wants them. Plenty just lie derelict. In the fifties during the "rebuilding" of the country the number of inhabitants doubled so plenty of churches were built (attendance then was 98%) in the presumption they would be required. Nothing was further from the truth. In state schools religion in the 60's was removed and as the private schools fell under state control it declined further.

[JimC]

Quite a few small old churches (particularly in the country) in Oz have passed into private hands, typically renovated to be used as private homes.

And certainly church attendance here is continuing to decline, which is true in most western countries, I gather...

Death by 1000 cuts...

[Hermit]

If you are baptised as a catholic you will still be counted as one which says bugger all.

Bugger all indeed. The Vatican can claim anything and anybody it wants. The Australian government only knows how many people declared themselves as catholics in our five-yearly censuses, but it does not know who these people are. In 2016 22.6% of the Australian population had declared itself to be catholics, down from 25.3% five years earlier.

[pErvinalia]

That's still ridiculously high. What's wrong with these people?

[JimC]

A lot of those declare themselves to be Catholics because of vague cultural/family/tribal feelings, I suspect - the hard-core who actually go to mass every week without fail is getting less, and getting old...

[Scot Dutchy]

If you are as child baptised into the catholic church. You remain one on their register. Removing yourself from it is a very long and difficult process. What you think you are is of no importance to the catholic church. They have your soul. It is a numbers game and is the same one played by muslims. Mosques here are hardly full and mostly bankrupt.