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pawelk1986
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28 Sep 2014, 7:32 am

I just wonder, how many Catholic are in UK, I'm Catholic from Poland, where i live.,

Many Poles emigrated to UK including my friend, but it's not what I mean.

I know that once a Catholic in England were denied civil rights, then try to force them to convert to Anglicanism, I wonder how many indigenous Catholics living in England, referring to the indigenous Catholics I mean Britons who resisted the attempt of conversion to Anglicanism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.



The_Walrus
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28 Sep 2014, 10:39 am

Most Christians in the UK are pretty lapsed. Also, everyone who was alive when Catholicism was illegal is now dead.

There are about 6 million Catholics in England, Wales and Scotland, which is about 10% of the population (as a comparison, 4.8% of people report as Muslim). However, a large number of them are Irish immigrants, or their descendants, as well as Polish or Lithuanian. About 75% of Catholics in Britain identify as White British (note: my source for this is Wikipedia, I can't find a better one), 10% Eastern European, and 4.5% Irish.

So there are maybe 4.5 million British Catholics, using your definition, but a good proportion will be lapsed and a number more will actually not be able to trace their Catholicism to persecuted ancestors.



pluto
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29 Sep 2014, 5:28 pm

The proportion of Catholics in Scotland is slightly higher than in England and Wales.It's mostly people of Irish or Highland descent.
Highlanders whose clans were based on islands especially were able to preserve their religion due to their remoteness,although
some clans were Protestant to begin with.
In the west of Scotland in particular Catholics have separate schools and Celtic football club are a focus of Irish-Scottish traditions.


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13 Oct 2014, 6:52 pm

I'm Catholic! I'm actually an adult convert (grew up vaguely Anglican) as I've always been drawn to Catholicism, but it wasn't until I was about 22 that I realised that that was what it was. The more I read, the more it made sense in a way that a lot of Protestant theology didn't. Add on to that the fact that Canterbury can't seem to decide what it actually believes in and that I find a lot of Evangelical approaches too in-your-face and intrinsically anti-Catholic (whilst teaching a lot of false things about Catholicism), and that I prayed about it, and 6 months ago I was formally received into the Catholic Church at Easter. I am home. :)


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13 Oct 2014, 7:21 pm

I'm from a catholic family, but an atheist.

Grandparents on mother side Catholic. Grandparents on father side she was raised catholic he CoE, he was a late convert to Catholicism, but this may have been becuase the process took a long time back then. He was already retired by then. He worked for the Samaritans after he retired which was set up by a catholic priest.

I went to a monastery school and hated it, but would have hated any boarding school. My sister loved her convent school, becuase she is social.

She identifies as Catholic and wanted a Catholic wedding, and opted for catholic baptism for her kids. The reality is she is not religious nor would she know much of catholic theology (nor care). I think she represent many people who identify with the culture of the religion without really practicing the theology.

There is actually some weird law that haven't yet been addressed by the Catholic reform acts. For instance Catholic priest cannot preside the legal marriage, and a Catholic church cannot be used for the legal ceremony (I believe that is correct). Strangely a Methodist priest could do this, becuase it is a protestant denomination. I remember this from my sister wedding, where the Catholic wedding needed a CoE priest to do the legal marriage bit (as many people just register in Town halls after marriage, few people are even aware of this issue). She got married in the country, becuase of the marriage she wanted country house, village church, etc.

It is not so much that there is active discrimination, there is just isn't motivation to change these lesser known laws, which are obscure and don't tend to affect modern life anyway.



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13 Oct 2014, 7:35 pm

I have never believed in God, and in early years didn't mind the ritual for rituals sake. Later years I was actually in a CeO school. I actually often hid in cupboard to skip Mass. Ironically a bit like how Catholic priest used to hide during the Reformation.

The Catholic sympathisers do not go scot free though, Bloody Mary killed a fair few Protestants.

Then there was Cromwell a Puritan, would make Mula Omaar look like a p**** cat (I always wonder why in the state people think of Puritan in such an idealized way when they were religious extremist, and intolerant the next religion)



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13 Oct 2014, 7:39 pm

Grandfather from mother side, wanted an annulment from the Pope, which he didn't get. He had deep shame for getting divorce and he never really recovered form that even after re-marrying. Tbh is was insufferable, so it is not surprising that Grandmother wanted to divorce him. Still he had the old catholic guilt thing down for life.



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13 Oct 2014, 7:43 pm

pluto wrote:
The proportion of Catholics in Scotland is slightly higher than in England and Wales.It's mostly people of Irish or Highland descent.
Highlanders whose clans were based on islands especially were able to preserve their religion due to their remoteness,although
some clans were Protestant to begin with.
In the west of Scotland in particular Catholics have separate schools and Celtic football club are a focus of Irish-Scottish traditions.


Well Columba and Gaels were from Ireland anyway, they just came in waves. The last one was not long ago.

Scotland population is small so there is more Catholic in England naturally.



naturalplastic
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13 Oct 2014, 9:08 pm

Didn't all of the surviving English Catholics flee over here to Maryland in the 1600's at the invite of Lord Baltimore?



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14 Oct 2014, 4:38 pm

No, plenty remained faithful to Rome and just did it all in secret. Look up priest-holes!


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19 Oct 2014, 5:20 pm

naturalplastic wrote:
Didn't all of the surviving English Catholics flee over here to Maryland in the 1600's at the invite of Lord Baltimore?


Not really.

Catholics had as much to fear from Puritans as CoE, so they weren't necessarily better of in America.