Re: Odd FT Idea

You wrote: 

>BTW, I checked some numbers on the CIA's World Factbook 1997

>much in 200 years.  I think the RCC will hold some degree of power in 
the FSE,

Remember though, those numbers indicate "official" Catholics.  i.e., 
those baptised as infants in RCC.  Whether or not they've darkened the 
doors since then is rather problematical.  In many European nations you 
are sorta assumed to be a certain religion unless you make an issue out 
of being otherwise.  When my parents lived in Germany during the late 
1970s (for those of you counting, yes, I was born there) German 
citizens paid a tithe as part of their annual taxes.  You checked 
either Catholic or Evangaelisch (analogous to US's Lutherans, pardon my 
spelling).  You could nominate another church with some amount of 
governmental paperwork.  But many Germans are Catholic or Lutheran once 
a year--when they check their little box on the tax form, and have 
nothing to do with God or religion the rest of the time.  Even in US 
without governmental pressure one way or another, all churches have 
more bodies on rolls than actually present.  Last I heard, my church 
has about 700 paper members.  Sunday attendance is about 500 or so.  
And we have an agressive program of weeding people off the rolls if 
they never show up and we can't contact them (Hello, if you moved to 
Alaska it's common courtesy to let organizations you are a member of 
know to drop you off the rolls).  I understand it's common for 
attendance in some churches to be a third or less of the paper rolls.

>all over the map.  With the various trends occuring, I make no (or 
few) >predictions there.

In US at least religion is very cyclical.  Holiness 
Movements/Awakenings/whatever at the drop of a hat, religions that are 
here today and gone tomorrow, prediction is impossible.

John M. Atkinson