Talking the talk but not walking the walk

What the Catholic Church says and reality are two opposite points on the moral compass

By their fruits ye shall know them

 

Federal statistics reveal that across the nation, from state to state, there’s a huge difference in social pathology, with murder rates varying 6 fold, abortion rates varying 8 fold, SAT scores varying 228 points, marriage rates varying 72%, and divorce rates varying 21%.  The states with the highest percentage of Catholics (i.e., Illinois with 63%, Rhode Island with 59%, and Massachusetts with 43%) do very poorly in all these areas, whereas the states with the least percentage of Catholics (i.e., North Dakota with 22%, Iowa with 17%, and Utah with 8%) are at the opposite end of the spectrum.

Where you would expect Catholic states to have the lowest abortion rates because of opposition to abortion by the Catholic Church, the abortion rates in ALL of these states are the highest in the country, with the rate in New York (38% Catholic) being 8 times higher than the rate in South Dakota (20% Catholic).  Where you would expect the marriage rate in Catholic states to be the highest, their rates are actually the lowest, with non-Catholic states like Utah (8.3% Catholics) having a marriage rate 73% higher than Catholic states like New York.  With the putative Catholic opposition to divorce, you’d expect to see a clear and distinct difference between states in this area, but relative to the low marriage rates of the predominately Catholic states, there’s no such distinction.  As a percent of the number of marriages, divorces in the most Catholic state Illinois (with 63% Catholics) are on par with the least Catholic state Utah (with 8% Catholics).  And even here, Utah wins because their marriage rate is 48% higher than Illinois in the first place.

A real unexpected outcome of evaluating these statistics is the much lower murder rates in ALL the least Catholic states relative to ALL the most Catholic states.  For decades now, the murder rates in non-Catholic states like Vermont, Iowa, North Dakota, and South Dakota have been lower than 1 per 100,000 population, contrasted to rates greater than 5 in ALL these mainly Catholic states.  In 1994, compared to North Dakota, the murder rate in New York was 55 TIMES higher, in Rhode Island was 20 TIMES higher, and in Massachusetts was 17 TIMES higher.

If the abortion rate of the entire nation were equivalent to South Dakota, there would be 1,256,693 fewer abortions every year.  Conversely, if it were equivalent to primarily Catholic New York, there would be 944,000 MORE.  If the marriage and divorce rates of the entire nation were equivalent to that of Catholic free Tennessee, there would be 832,000 MORE marriages and fewer divorces.  Conversely, if it were equivalent to a Catholic state like Massachusetts, there would be 416 thousand FEWER marriages and the divorce rate would INCREASE.  If the murder rate in the entire nation were equivalent to North Dakota in 1994, there would be only 560 murders annually, a reduction of 25,520 murders.  Conversely, if it were equivalent to a Catholic state like New York, there would be 6,090 MORE, and if it were equivalent to Catholic-influenced Washington, DC, there would be 176,900 MORE.

If SAT scores for the entire nation were equivalent to Iowa’s score of 1,221, we’d score the highest in the world on both TIMSS and PISA.  But if they were equivalent to Rhode Island’s score of 993, we’d score between Israel and Africa.

 

The reason Rhode Island scores 228 SAT points lower than Iowa can’t be completely explained by race (a higher percentage of “minorities”), because SAT scores for Whites in Iowa are 192 points higher than for “whites” in Rhode Island.  It can’t be due to lack of education spending, because Rhode Island spends three times MORE per student for education than Iowa.

http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/North_Dakota_CBS_08.pdf

	Rhode Island	New York	Mass	Iowa	North Dakota
SAT reading total	495	491	514	608	594
SAT math total	498	508	525	613	604
SAT reading Whites	516	520	529	614	607
SAT math Whites	519	533	537	613	610
	Rhode Island	New York	Mass	Iowa	North Dakota
SAT reading total	15	11	34	128	114
SAT math total	18	28	45	133	124
SAT reading Whites	36	40	49	134	127
SAT math Whites	39	53	57	133	130

 

 

If you’ve ever wondered why it seems Catholics are always  in the forefront of pushing “gender equality”, perhaps it’s because so many Protestant girls scored higher in SAT than most if not ALL Catholic boys.  For several decades, boys in Rhode Island scored an average of 501 in SAT math, whereas girls in Iowa scored an average of 539, which is 38 points higher.  Before the SAT was “re-centered”, SAT math scores for girls in North Dakota had increased from 500 to higher than 550 while those for boys in Massachusetts and Rhode Island had remained flat at 510 and 501, respectively.  To boys in such an intellectual well, they’ll see a lot of girls when they look up, but to boys in Iowa and North Dakota and a whole host of other Protestant states, they see only boys when they look down.

Because the complete data and test questions and percent correct by all kinds of factors, including sex and private or public school is available to the public for TIMSS, it can be determined that a TIMSS physics score of 425 was assigned to students who scored lower than if they’d just guessed.  For example, 200 points are received just for signing your name, 150 points for memorization questions which test memory but not math or reasoning skills, and the average student who just guessed on 4 part and 5 part multiple choice questions would receive an average of 100 points, for a total of 450 points.  So the SAT scores of 430 and 440 for girls in Rhode Island and Massachusetts has a high probability of being lower than they would have received had they just guessed.

The real comparison of intellectual skills of boys in Iowa to girls in Rhode Island is not 630 to 430, it’s 100% correct to a NEGATIVE score.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In 1976, the correlation between SAT math scores and the percentage of Catholics in the least and most Catholic states showed an r-squared of .7928, proof of the link between good education and Protestant education.  This suggests that Catholics in the most Protestant states dragged down the scores of these states, whereas the Protestants in the most Catholics states artificially inflated the scores of these states.

 

 

Ten years later, by 1986, the correlation had increased to an r-squared of .8342, showing the effects of the positive education of Protestants, the effects of the negative education of Catholics, or both.

 

Another five years later, in 1991, r-squared continued to increase to .84, suggesting the dumbing down of a Catholic education was becoming a fine tuned science.

 

 

 

This trend continued through 1994, with r-squared increasing to .8409!

 

 

A similar pattern was followed by SAT verbal scores, with r-squared increasing from .8291 in 1976 to .8311 by 1993!

 

 

 

Extending this trend line for 1976 SAT Math both forward and backward, it could have been expected that, all else being equal (which of course it is not), a 100% White Protestant state will have a score of 620 and a 100% Catholic state will have a score of 320.

 

 

But by 1993, this expectation for Protestant states increases to 632 and decreases for Catholic states to 298.

 

 

The pattern was a bit different with SAT Verbal scores, with Protestants having an expectation of 570 in 1976 dropping to 560 in 1993, and Catholics having an expectation of 290 in 1976 and dropping to 280 in 1993.

 

 

 

 

 

No wonder Catholics always have this sense of “we need each other” or “we are all one seed” or “we are all brothers”—without Protestants around to subsidize them, they’d be living and murdering each other and having life expectancies or crime rates like Africans, if not worse.  Consider what their murder rate would be with no Protestants around (10 per 100k population), versus 0.2 for Protestants with no Catholics around.

 

 

 

Or their abortion rate which would be 46 per 1,000 women of child rearing age, versus 9 in Protestant states with no Catholics around.

 

Or their education spending per student which would exceed $20,000 versus Protestants with no Catholics around at about $4,000!

 

Or their marriage rate which would be 3 per 1,000 population versus Protestants with no Catholics around of 8.3!

 

 

Even the number of police required to maintain law and order decreases as the percentage of Catholics decreases, with the number of police per 100,000 population in the most Catholic state Illinois [63% Catholic] being 375, versus 223 in Utah [only 8% Catholic].

The trend line suggests that there would be only 180 police per 100k population in a Catholic-free state, compared to more than 500 in a 100% Catholic state.  And this is not necessary good news, because there’s a strong correlation [r-squared = 0.82] between the increase in the number of police and the increase in homicides!

 

Before SAT scores were “re-centered”, thus fouling all attempts to compare prior scores to the “new and improved” [read: DUMBED DOWN ] SAT test (renamed from scholastic aptitude test to scholastic achievement test in true pc form), a simple linear projection of ALL the Catholic states shows they are mental flat liners—their scores simply showed no improvement over several decades. Conversely, ALL the Protestant states showed a VAST improvement, with a linear projection for North Dakota’s SAT math score projected to reach almost 650 over the NEXT two decades, Minnesota to reach 630, and Iowa to reach 610.

 

 

State	Catholics % State population	Murder  per 100k	Abortions per 1,000 women age 15-44 1988	NAEP Whites	SAT Math 1994	SAT less 400 pts	Marriages per 1,000 population	Divorce as percent marriage
Illinois	63.00%	6	26.4		560	160	5.8	43.7
Rhode Island	59.20%	3	30.6	275	463	63	7	41.3
Massachusetts	42.70%	3	30.2	283	477	77	6.1	36.6
New Jersey	41.10%	5	35.1		478	78	5	57.6
Connecticut	38.70%	3	31.2	288	477	77	5.5	49
New York	37.60%	5	43.3	283	473	73	7	39.5
Pennsylvania	29.40%	6	18.9		461	61	4.7	49.8
Texas	29.20%	6	24.8	285	474	74	7.4	43.7
New Hampshire	24.00%	1	17.5		491	91	7.3	46.3
North Dakota	22.20%	1	14.9	286	592	192	6.5	36.6
South Dakota	20.50%	1	5.7		563	163	8.3	36.9
Iowa	17.10%	1	14.6	285	583	183	6.9	39.7
Maine	15.10%	1	16.2	285	469	69	7.9	44.8
Montana	12.10%	2	16.5	287	536	136	7.3	51.5
Utah	8.30%	1	12.8	279	563	163	8.6	46.7

 

 

 

The following are highlights from the above murder statistics for 1994 showing vividly the difference between Catholic and non-Catholic states, cities, and countries.

 

 

 

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005099.html

 

 

References:

1.       SAT math and verbal scores by sex and race.

2.       Analysis of SAT math and verbal scores.

3.       Two decades of SAT math and verbal scores by state.

4.       1988 abortion rates by state.

5.       Deaths, crimes, and  murder rates by state.

6.       Original Excel spreadsheet which collates the above data.

7.       Latest SAT scores by sex for North Dakota.

8.       Same pattern followed by PISA scores.

9.       Same pattern followed by TIMSS scores.