How can I, a Catholic apologist, say that Protestantism is winning? Does that mean I'm a traitor?

No, it means I'm not here to tell my largely Catholic audience what they want to hear. I'm here to tell them the truth,

just like I tell a hard truth to any non-Catholic who watches my channel. Now, by winning, I don't mean Protestantism has attained the best worldview, or that it expresses the fullness of the Christian faith. I mean that Protestantism is growing faster, or at least declining much slower, than Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. So it's absurd for Catholics or the Orthodox to crow about how Protestantism is dead. Everybody's becoming Catholic or the future is Orthodox.

I agree that there has been a resurgence of interest online in the ancient traditions of Catholic and Orthodox churches.

And maybe you've personally heard of a lot of conversions out of Protestantism in your communities on the internet.

I get people emailing me all the time thanking me for how this channel help them choose to become Catholic. And if you like

to help us keep doing that, then please hit the subscribe button and go over and support us at

Trenthornpodcast.com. And whenever I hear about this, I say, praise me to God. But the internet is not real life,

or it's not representative of real life as a whole. And when we stay in an online bubble,

we can get a distorted view of reality, like thinking that seeing many online stories

about Protestant converts to Catholicism means that everybody's becoming Catholic.

I'm also not the only Catholic who has noticed this bad news.

Eric Salmons at Crisis Magazine wrote an excellent summary of the latest Pew Research

Religious Landscape Report, and the findings are brutal for Catholics.

Samans writes the following.

Only 19% of Americans self-identify as

Catholic, down from 24% in 2007. This is a 20% decrease. By comparison, Protestants decreased by

21% while religious nuns increased by 81% and Muslims increased by an astounding 200%, although they still make up a small

percentage of the overall population, only 1.2%. Even though the Pew survey headlines suggest that

the decline in Christianity in this country may have leveled off, it's clear that overall

direction is downward. Now let's go into the data a little bit deeper because at first this makes

it sound like Protestantism is doing worse than Catholicism, but that's not the case. I'm going to

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