Catholics only make up about 10% of the population in Great Britain. A distinct minority.
However, in terms of Church pracitise, they are now the largest.
Britain has become a ‘Catholic country’ – Telegraph
Last night, leading figures gave warning that the Church of England could become a minority faith and that the findings should act as a wake-up call.
The statistics show that attendance at Anglican Sunday services has dropped by 20 per cent since 2000. A survey of 37,000 churches, to be published in the new year, shows the number of people going to Sunday Mass in England last year averaged 861,000, compared with 852,000 Anglicans worshipping.
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Churchgoing in Anglican and Catholic parishes had stood at about a million each for the past 10 years, though the relative equality in their numbers over recent years is surprising considering that there are 25 million people who regard themselves as Anglicans, and only 4.2 million Catholics.
And here’s another Telegraph (UK) article, written by a Catholic woman journalist
A confident faith willing to fight God’s corner – Telegraph
When I was editing the Catholic Herald in the early 1990s, we thought we were living through the most momentous times for the Catholic Church in England and Wales.
We were witnessing the conversion of such Establishment figures as the Duchess of Kent, Ann Widdecombe and the Telegraph’s Charles Moore, but we never dreamed that one day an ex-prime minister would himself cross the Tiber. Or, indeed, that this news would be overshadowed by an even more important development: that for the first time since Henry VIII, there are more Catholics than Anglicans in this country.
This is not because the prayer for the conversion of "Mary’s Dowry" (England), with which Catholic children used to begin their school day, has been answered. Rather, Catholic immigrants, from eastern Europe as well as Africa, have filled the once-empty pews of Catholic churches across the country.
After more than 500 years of being a suspect minority, forced to convert, driven underground or abroad, the Church is now triumphant.
The influx of co-religionists has had a profound impact on the four million ‘native’ Catholics: to see their moribund Church suddenly stir with life revives the confidence of a community that has become accustomed to attacks on its beliefs as antiquated and its Pope as evil.
After being kicked around by Dawkins, Hitchens et al, Catholics can draw some comfort from their swelling numbers.
At a local parish level, too, the wave of new Catholics is being gratefully felt. The charitable work of parish life, including care for the elderly and creches, can draw volunteers from the new intake.
Anglican (Church of England) leaders are disputing the findings
Anglicans: England is not a Catholic nation – Telegraph
… Church of England leaders have disputed the statistics, saying that they were misleading and did not provide a fair comparison.
The Church was nevertheless put on the defensive by the figures, which coincided with the long-predicted news that Tony Blair had converted to Catholicism on Friday.
Mr Blair was brought up in the Church of England but his wife, Cherie, is a practising Catholic.
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The Rev Lynda Barley … added that, as Anglicans were not under the same obligation as Catholics to go to church every Sunday, a more accurate comparison was the average attendance at all Church of England services, both weekday and Sunday, over a month. That figure stood at 1.7 million, she said.
She said that while the Church of England encouraged adherents to go to worship weekly, many who only went once or twice a year could consider themselves full members of the Church.
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But Mr Blair received a less warm welcome from some Catholics, including his fellow convert and politician Ann Widdecombe, the former Tory minister, who suggested that double standards may have been involved.
"At the point you are received you have to say individually and out loud, ‘I believe everything the Church teaches to be revealed truth’," said Miss Widdecombe, who converted in 1993.
"That means if you previously had any problems with Church teaching, as Tony Blair obviously did over abortion, as he did again over Sunday trading, you would have to say you changed your mind.
"And I think people will want to know that he did go through that process, because otherwise it will seem as if the Church did make an exception for somebody just because of who he is."
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