Orthodox vs. Catholic: The Future Demographic Meltdown

Eastern Orthodoxy is aging and dying, while Catholicism is set to increase.

In simple terms: as Russia goes, so goes Eastern Orthodoxy. The reason, in my view is diversity. Catholicism is diverse, covering all geography and people groups, and is immune to being decimated when one group or region is decimated. Not so for Orthodoxy.


First some raw stats.

• The global fertility rate is 2.46 children per woman. (Global replacement rate is 2.3, developed nation replacement rate is 2.1)
• Nearly every country has a declining fertility rate.
• 1,114 million Catholics with a fertility rate of 2.49.
• 230 million Orthodox with a fertility rate of 1.42.

Eastern Orthodoxy is a regional religion. This is often disputed by Orthodox apologists, but it is simple demographic reality. Zoom your mental camera in on the area of the globe comprising the following 6 countries:

1. Russia,
2. Ukraine,
3. Romania,
4. Greece,
5. Belarus and
6. Bulgaria.

These 6 countries make up 82% (190 Million) of Eastern Orthodoxy. But religion is not all they have in common. Not only are these countries geographically close and culturally similar, but these countries have the some of the lowest fertility rates in the world. Combined, their fertility rate is a frigid 1.37 (Keep in mind that replacement rate is 2.1 for a developing country). 1.37 means a rapidly aging and shrinking population, which is currently happening. Russia is home to 48% of Orthodoxy. Out of 222 countries, Russia and Bulgaria place 196 and 195 in global fertility respectively and have the best fertility rates of the 6 countries with a horrific 1.42. Ukraine, which houses 16% of all Orthodox, has an abysmal fertility rate of 1.28. And those 6 countries make up 82% of Eastern Orthodoxy! The other 18% of Orthodoxy does not leave room for hope either. It is just as regionally isolated, and its fertility rate is barely higher at 1.67. There is no significant area of Orthodoxy that is growing.

Now let’s take a similar survey of the Catholic world. The top 27 countries which comprise 82% (906 Million) of Catholicism have a fertility rate of 2.45. That is a nice solid number that means growth. Another thing which becomes obvious is the diversification. Like a balanced financial portfolio, the Catholic population is scattered. By the time we get to #11 on the list of most populous Catholic countries, which is the 30 million Catholics in the Congo, we have gone from latin America to North America, over to the Philippines and then to Eastern and western Europe. There are developed industrial countries to 3rd world and everything in-between right up at the top of the list. There is an incredible diversity. There are 30 million Catholics in Congo with a fertility rate of 5.68. Wow. The 70 million Filipino Catholics have a fertility rate of 3.19. Even the United States bucks the global trend of developed nations with its replacement rate of 2.06. Ironically, the US is one of the most fertile places for the Orthodox. But, there are only 1.2 million Orthodox in the US.

Of course my numbers are assuming that the fertility rate of a nations Catholic or Orthodox population is at least as good as the national fertility rate (And yes, I also assume that a high fertility rate is good). In some cases, particularly less developed countries, I would think that the more devout subsets of the population would have a higher rate. In my own case, this is true. My 3 siblings and I (we are all serious about or religion) have a combined fertility rate of >6. And I know for a fact that high number has something to do with religious conviction in every case. Combine this reality with the fact that the Catholic Church is by all accounts growing more conservative, with more open teaching against contraception, and a more willing laity to obey those directives, and the future looks bright for Catholics. Is there a similar undercurrent in Orthodoxy? I cant say. I know they have dropped the ball on the contraception issue, that is a fact.

But one crucial thing the data tells us is that Orthodoxy is regional. As Russia goes, so goes Orthodoxy. And Russia aint going anywhere. It is actually shrinking, with that trend predicted to continue. There are simply no bright spots in the demographic future of Orthodoxy. The website where I obtained most of my data on Orthodoxy actually included ~22 million “Orthodox” in very fertile (6.02) Ethiopia. One problem, those are Oriental Orthodox, and are absolutely not in communion with Eastern Orthodoxy. I doubt if any of our Greek or Russian Orthodox brothers would want to claim them as their own. The most populous country with a decent Orthodox population and a decent fertility rate is the US. Keep moving down the list looking for good fertility rates and the only ones you will find are such sparkling gems as Kyrgyzstan, Syria, Iraq, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Jordan, Israel, Tajikistan, Palestine, and Turkey. I think it is not a stretch to say that it is the Muslims in these countries that are pushing up the fertility rates, not the Christians. Combine this with the fact that half of Orthodoxy resides in Russia, which is on the bottom of the “religiosity” scale.

Basically, Russians as a whole simply don’t care about religion. Compare with Brazil, the Philippines and even the US, which are fundamentalists compared with Russia.
Another factor to consider is Islam. Orthodoxy and Islam often share the same territory, Whereas the majority of Catholicism does not. I don’t think it is controversial to say that in those countries where they coexist, in general Islam slowly dominates through intermarriage conversions and other factors.


So that leaves us with a very narrow, well defined, and fairly easily predicable outlook for Eastern Orthodoxy. Because it is so narrowly defined within certain nations which are imploding, it is fair to say that Orthodoxy is imploding. Will it disappear? No way. There are always subsets of a population which have higher than average fertility rates. I am sure there is a woman in Russia right now who has 7 kids. If that is something she passes on to her descendants, then the fertility rate in Russia will someday be higher. But the size of the population will have decreased dramatically. I think this is far less likely to happen in Catholic countries such as Brazil, Mexico, central Africa and the Philippines. They will maintain above replacement levels of fertility and skip the drastic decline that Russia and eastern Europe are experiencing.

What it means demographically:

I think that this data almost certainly means that the 230 million Eastern Orthodox in the world will be declining rather rapidly in the coming 2 generations. Those who are left will no doubt be more devout, which may or may not be good for the prospects of Catholic/Orthodox reunion, but they will be much fewer. I predict there will be a bit less than 100 million Eastern Orthodox by 2070. For the same time period I predict there will be over 2 billion Catholics.

What it means for the Church:

Of course I do not wish ill on anyone, and I sure do wish the Orthodox would start to out-breed their Muslim neighbors, or better yet... become Catholic. But I am a Catholic who sees the Catholic Church as THE kingdom of God, the rock that grows to fill the earth from Daniels vision, the mustard seed that grows to a huge tree, etc. Why would anyone not want to be a part of that? And I see in these demographics perhaps the working out of God’s plan. I can’t prove it, but it is interesting to think about. Here is a powerhouse comment by Bryan Cross on Called to Communion about the Catholic/Orthodox numbers game and other important considerations.

One thing I know, is that the scope and reach of the Catholic Church is well worth considering. It is the biggest organization on the planet. Stop. Re-read that. Yes, it is the biggest organization on the planet. It shouldn’t work, but it does. Watching the Catholic Church is like watching a perpetual motion machinerun or seeing a unicorn; it can’t be, but there it is. The only thing that comes close is Sunni Islam with its 940 million. But Sunni Islam can hardly be described as one group with one hierarchy. This aspect of the Catholic Church is to me miraculous. As stupid and evil humans can be, that one organization with such grand claims for itself could survive so improbably for 2000 years is… well, a miracle. It is one among many reasons to submit to the Magisterium of the Catholic Church. And it was one of the reasons I did not submit to Eastern Orthodoxy.

Fertility rate by country: http://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?v=31

Wiki on # of adherents: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Orthodox_Church#Number_of_adherents

Global fertility: 2.46 children born/woman (2011 est.) https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/xx.html

46 countries will lose population by 2050, many in eastern Europe. The population of Bulgaria will fall by 35%, Ukraine by 33%, and Belarus, Romania, the Russian Federation, Moldova, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland by 20% to 30%.” http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/nohumans.html

Catholicism or Orthodoxy?

A few months ago I had my sola Scriptura world crushed. I’ll skip past the soul searching and hair pulling to the acceptance of the facts. Protestantism cannot possibly be part of the church Christ founded. Wonderful, Jesus loving people, absolutely. Will they be throwing stacks of crowns at His feet in heaven? Absolutely. Do they have the slightest credible claim of being the church Christ gave to the world, no way. Even before I accepted this fact, I knew that if I did I would be forced into one of two rival churches both claiming to be the one and only church on the face of the planet. Those two communions are Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. The reason these are the only two in the running is that they are the only ones that have a plausible claim to succession from the Apostles. If sola Scriptura is false, which I became fully convinced of, then a tangible measure of orthodoxy in the form of submission to a particular leadership is needed. Rome and Constantinople are the only serious options. So where to go? First, my qualification. This decision between Catholicism and E. Orthodoxy was not a huge question for me. By that I mean that I was following the assumption that if Christ founded a single, visible church, then He made it easy for even a layman to find. If I ask for wisdom, do some looking into history from various sources on all sides of the question, I will be able to easily identify the true church. I really believe God gives us BIG, knock you on the head clues about the identity of the church. For instance, the disunity in Protestantism is a biggie. It is as inescapable as air, and it points the Protestant to look elsewhere. Also the lack of the sacraments in varying degrees pushes them away. So whatever the answer, the answer must include the element of simplicity infused through it. So that was my starting point: For me as a layman who can only spare an hour or so a day to reading Scripture, history and theology, I have to assume that the question “what is the church?” must be one of those big questions like “how am I saved?” that is both easy to answer initially, but also has depth. It must be a question that a child could answer easily, and a scholar could study for a lifetime. Knowing myself pretty well, I went for the “child could answer easily” half of the equation! I have no stomach any longer for the pompousness of scholars and theologians that come up with elaborate “systems” for simple things like the gospel that supposedly just can’t be understood without more and more study. This is the failure of Dispensationalism, which takes what it sees as contradictions in the Scripture and comes up with an either/or rather than a both/and hermeneutic. I am fully convinced that concerning Divine revelation, the most important things for humans to understand will be simple enough for a human child to understand. That doesn’t mean they can’t also be complex enough for a brilliant mind to spend a lifetime on, but when the brilliant mind can’t seem to coherently explain their “system” to me, I get suspicious that it is the thoughts in the brilliant mind itself being promulgated, and not Divine revelation. To answer the Catholic vs. Orthodox question, I quickly turned my sights on Rome, because it is the bigger target. Not because it is the larger communion, which it is, but because it’s claims are so audacious. To claim infallibility is to invite investigation. Also it has a unified hierarchy by having one Bishop claiming to be the measure of unity. These two aspects give it what appear to be big weak spots ready for prodding. Orthodoxy does not claim infallibility in the same sweeping and targetable way that Catholicism does, and has many “autocephalous” heads that although sharing a surprising amount of common belief, have no single unifying head who is himself the measure of true doctrine. So I set out to cut the Achilles heel, to show that the Catholic magisterium has contradicted itself, to prove to myself that they are just as autonomous in their doctrines as Protestants are. I was humbled by the 20 centuries of what could only be divine protection from contradiction. I sought out the best Protestant examples of where the Magisterium has shown itself to be fallible, and found their best arguments to be but straw in the face of 2000 years of stalwart protection of the faith that is the Catholic Church. For me this recognition came while watching an online debate on the infallibility of the Papacy between Protestant apologist James White and Catholic apologist Robert Sungenis. White’s best examples of a Pope contradicting previously defined doctrines were so minor, so petty, so infrequent, and ultimately very explainable, that I literally was flooded with an emotional feeling of discovering what must be the biggest miracle in history: that the largest (1.1 Billion adherents) and oldest institutional organization on the planet has never contradicted itself. The claim is huge. Papal infallibility of hundreds of Popes for two millennia. It is so huge it is dismissed outright as being impossible by Protestants and Orthodox. And in a way they are right, it IS impossible for a mere human institution to be infallible. IF, that is, it is merely human. But the next step is rarely taken by the naysayers, please show where it has failed. Please show where there has been even the slightest contradiction between one infallible statement and previous infallible statements. Once this is attempted to a reasonable degree, the biggest miracle (other than the Incarnation) in the history of mankind is revealed, and it points to the claim of infallibility being true. It is common at this point in the search for truth for Protestants to get hung up on the “yeah, but” argument. “Yeah, but Purgatory is false doctrine, so the Pope is fallible.” Or “Yeah, but Catholics believe in salvation by works, so the Pope is fallible.” These are important topics, but completely beside the point. All I wanted to do at this point in my journey (and what I challenge anyone to do) is show where a Pope has preached as true doctrine something later defined as heresy or vice versa. It is shocking how Protestants never seem to get around to actually attempting to show this. It is assumed that the very claim of infallibility itself can be dismissed outright, because after all the Pope is just a man, not God, and has to be fallible. Or the Galileo argument is put forth or some such nonsense. What is rarely attempted is to try to show where any one of these 265 men have contradicted each other in the last 20 centuries. Seems easy right? Go ahead and try. You will end up Catholic. As a Christian in the Reformed camp, I was always a staunch postmillennialist. Basically that means I think the millennium is now and Christ is here with us in his Church. Things will progressively get better and better until we wake up one day, and look around to find out history is over and sin has been eradicated for good. So for me to see this miraculous example of infallibility within recorded history of an organization that claims to be THE Kingdom of Christ, how happy that made me! I felt like a modern day Jew who has been waiting and hoping for the messiah who first hears about Jesus. Something he thought could never happen in his lifetime has already been going on for 2000 years! For me, Postmillenialism is no longer a doctrine to be studied, but a church to submit to. The Catholic Church IS Postmillennialism! Now after reading* a sufficient amount on this issue of the Papacy to convince me of its protection from error, the arguments for Eastern Orthodoxy became hollow. Strangely, their arguments against Papal infallibility were the same old Protestant ones that seemed to be “after the fact” arguments. For instance, when the Protestant Reformation happened all of a sudden Luther and Calvin were in the position of believing in the authority of the “church” as they defined it, but at the same time having removed themselves from the way true doctrine has always been measured by the church. i.e., communion with those Bishops in succession from the Apostles. So instead of submitting to the Bishops in succession, they conveniently denied the need for succession. “Apostolicity” (as defined by them of course) was to be the measure of true authority. In the same way I see ample patristic evidence of the primacy of the Bishop of Rome from very early on in Church history. The 7 ecumenical councils from Nicaea I (325) to Nicaea II (787) were all ratified by the Pope for goodness sake! When I first heard that I chuckled out loud. Not only were they ratified, but the ratification was seen by everyone as necessary for those councils to be binding. Many Orthodox still would say that the Popes ratification is still a necessary criterion for an Ecumenical council. Is it any wonder the Orthodox have not had an Ecumenical council since Nicaea II? There is disagreement amongst themselves as to how one would even occur! WAIT. HOLD ON. I can hear the gears grinding in the Orthodox heads with the objections to what I just said. Save it. I have had enough of the disunity and excuses of Protestantism for a lifetime, and I don’t want to further examine Orthodox disunity and excuses. Here is the undisputed fact: there is disagreement between leaders within Eastern Orthodoxy as to:

1. How an ecumenical council would be called. 2. If it were called how it would be ratified in a definitive way without the signature of the Bishop of Rome.

The fact that individual Orthodox Christians feel they have an answer to these questions is about as impressive as a Protestant who feels he has the correct interpretation of John 6. That is to say it is not an authoritative opinion. The only point I need to know is that there are a variety of views on this question within Orthodoxy and they have not had a council since 787 A.D. Does anything more need to be said? I don’t see how someone leaving Protestantism because of a lack of Divine authority would then go to a church that is so fundamentally emasculated. The Catholic Church is under no such fog of confusion when it comes to defining doctrine and holding ecumenical councils. Another reason I rejected Orthodox claims is what I recognize as a Protestant smelling circular reasoning in regard to identifying the church. The church is composed of those who believe the true doctrine, and true doctrine is that which is believed by the whole church. Hmmm, sounds very similar to the “bootstrap” theory of Protestant church identification I just left. Orthodox believers will have complaints with what I just said above. Keep in mind that your intricate explainations fall utterly flat for a Protestant tired of the subjectivity and self rule of sola Scriptura. I want simplicity, and I know that Christ must have made it simple. Here is simplicity: How do we find the true doctrine? The churches in communion with the holder of the keys to the kingdom (the Bishop of Rome) have the true doctrine. See how there is no circularity? Here again you Orthodox will complain, but there you go again, sounding so Protestant by trying to convince me of your interpretation! "But the Pope said X!... that can't be right!" This attitude sounds like the self serving authority of Protestantism I am fleeing from. I have discussed the Filioque issue with Orthodox people and it was shocking how Protestant they sounded, trying to convince me how the Orthodox view makes more sense from Scripture, etc. That’s not the point! The point is WHO DECIDES what the true doctrine is. Is it the church or me and you? When Bishops disagree about the Filioque, who do I follow? Orthodoxy has the same answer Protestants do... "follow us." Well that's not good enough. So in the end, Catholicism just makes sense to my mind. How best can unity be kept in the church? The answer is obvious to me: one, single, visible beacon of unity. Outside of communion with that beacon is something else than the one true church. How can multiple heads function if there is no ultimate uniting force? This is the point that a child can understand but is often lost on the “wise” and highly educated. Just the idea of multiple “autocephalus” “heads” is an oxymoron. A body has one head. Only a hydra has multiple heads. “Christ is the head” you retort. Yeah, but on earth as in heaven there needs to be a single head. Ask a child which system works better and they will tell you what you already know in your heart. Other reasons I rejected Orthodoxy that I would categorize as “intuition” are:

1.There have been times in church history where the Pope was alone in his holding to the true faith. This fits with Christ supernaturally protecting the purity of the church’s doctrine. During these times, the patriarchates that now comprise “Eastern Orthodoxy” were (by their own admission) an utter heretical mess. Again, smells like Protestantism. 2.Orthodoxy is still comprised of regional churches which strongly identify with the nations they are in. 3.Numerically, Catholicism is way bigger. This means something to me. It seems to me to be something we should expect 2000 years after Pentecost. 4.The Catholic understanding of the Filioque fits better with a proper understanding of the family as a picture of the Trinitarian relationship. From man comes woman, from man and woman comes child. Again, makes sense. 5.Orthodoxy is more likely to side with mystical experience than intellectual. I don’t trust mystical experience unless it is firmly rooted in the intellectual. I see Catholics as doing both, while Orthodoxy seems to distrust the intellect. 6.Orthodoxy does not have a well defined, universal dogma on some very important issues like contraception and divorce. This is a clue to me that they have stagnated theologically. Christians need firm guidance from the church on these issues. 7.I see more variety in the modes of service of laity and Catholic monks and nuns than Orthodox. (this touches on my #4) 8.Catholicism has objectively produced better art. To me this is a sign of better theology, and a sign of God’s blessing. 9. I get the feeling that Orthodoxy is a "step behind" Protestantism. My money is on Protestantism disolving within half a millenia. Orthodoxy has more momentum from having all 7 sacraments and from true succession, but if the Orthodox churches remain in schism from Peter, they will eventually dissolve. I want to leave my descendants a legacy of a christendom that is true and lasting.

I don't expect to amaze anyone with my critique of Orthodoxy here. These have just been the reasons I personally found totally compelling in favor of Rome. I hope the Orthodox can give up the autonomy soon and just come back into full communion with the key-bearer. Imagine the witness to the world that would be! *The Early Papacy To the Synod of Chalcedon in 451, by Adrian Fortescue and Studies on the Early Papacy, by Dom John Chapman were very eye opening for a Protestant unfamiliar with the early church.