Well I don’t have a dog in that race that certainly should not be a race.
People have more children than they or the world can handle for various reasons. Likely the biggest one has been that people needed a lot of babies so enough would survive to help with the work that had to be done and take care of them in their old age. Then there’s the RCC and I suppose other churches telling people to have lots of kids to (to make a long and convoluted excuse short) populate the church in the future. Then of course sometimes people just don’t think about how many kids they’ll be able to support or maybe they keep having kids till they have a boy (or a girl).
From global warming to pollution in general to the energy shortage to water wars a lot of the world’s big problems are due to overpopulation. The last thing we’d need would be the RCC urging its people to mount up and overtake the Muslims.

Unfortunately there are a lot of religions that say “make babies” whether you can feed them or not. I agree, mystery poster.
There is also the RCC that says birth control is “bad”, abortion is “bad”. What is fortunate is that even in Italy the Catholics use birth control…which I find totally amusing and great! Thinking for themselves.
As to the comparison of the RCC and Muslims and the number of followers…who cares? Somebody has to be “ahead”.

Mystery poster! Once again I’m mystery poster. I really wish we had to sign our “names” when we post. Then I’d remember to sign my “name”.

Christian are having fewer babies and for the most part without killing them by abortion. But also Muslim nations are much more faithful to their beliefs.

OK, I thought that at least B’net would get this right. The Roman Catholic Church is not a religion unto itself. It is a denomination within the Christian religion. Otherwise, every denomination becomes its won religion and that would simply be silly. I know it is a small thing. But I have to explain to many people already that Catholics are Christian (and so are Mormans and Amish and a bunch others). Either that or they have to compare denominations within Islam as well.

jestrtyl:
“The Roman Catholic Church is not a religion unto itself. It is a denomination within the Christian religion.”
I had often wondered why there is the division, when people say, Protestants & Catholics. Since it is a denomination within the Christian religion, why doesn’t Protestant cover the RCC too? I obviously understand the Jews, Muslims, Hindu’s and others aren’t Protestants.

Hmm…I find this kind of sad, but then, I think I would if it were the reverse, too; a record broken, the status de-quoed. It’s like the passing of an era, or…something profound like that, I don’t know.
While I would quite agree with you two on the issue of how many children are appropriate for a family to have (as I type I have the very youngest of my six brothers, seventeen years younger than me, in the room; there’s also a sister in that list somewhere), but I do agree, the issue just of numbers should not be the most important. As it is, half of those Catholics probably only go to a church service twice a year, and ignore most of the RCC’s teachings the rest of the year. A functional family with one kid beats a dysfunctional one with ten, and the same applies to a church.
God bless.

j, good point. Comparing RCC’s to Muslims is like comparing Volkswagens to trucks. A more appropriate comparison would be RCC’s at 17.4% vs. Sunnis at 16.3% since Sunnis apparently make up about 85% of Muslims.
But maybe the RCC, which released this, wants to think of itself as a separate religion from the other wannabes. What do you think? Do they really expect to see y’all in heaven?

I expect everyone to see everyone else in the Hereafter Blow-out – whatever, and wherever it is. This includes anyone who does not subscribe to religion, denomination, sect, cult, congregation or committee and everyone who does. I don’t think the gates get locked against anyone. I do think that some folks who are miserable in this life may be just as miserable in whatever happens next. So, see ya there, sometime, folks!

I wish I had a good, articulate way to explain why the Roman Catholic Church is NOT A denomination at all. I’m in the midst of the discussion on another forum and am still trying to figure it out. The other religions are quite separate from the Roman Catholic Church, as they all split off during the Reformation, so yes, it does think of itself differently from the other Christian denominations and maybe for those reasons, and others, it doesn’t consider itself a denomination at all.

Mia,
The problem seems to be the definition of “religion”. Once you work that out, then you can slice it in parts to make a to denomination, then thinner still for whatever more defined group. I use this example with Confirmation Classes. A religion is the lunch period in a whole cafeteria. A denomination is the east side or the west side. A sect is simply a sect-ion of the cafeteria (which may be part of a denomination, or not), like the geeks or jocks or band tables. A cult is a room off the cafeteria, or its own room where people eat. They are all part of the whole, except some cults are completely separate from any other eating area. But some cults are simply a walled off area, as if a pull-wall blocks one part from another.
The Roman Catholics, or any of the mega-churches within the protestant Church (Capital “C” = universal Church as comapred to lower case “c” that usually indicates the building for a local congregation), don’t play well with others and prefer to run their own show. But they are all part of the same larger group oriented toward Christ, whether they choose to acknowledge the other denominations or not (how many cheerleaders tables did you know that actually paid any attention to the nerds table?)
I hope this helps. If not, well I’m out to lunch anyway.