Jennifer Fulwiler at the National Catholic Register examined the complaint of publishers that Catholics don’t buy books: http://www.ncregister.com/blog/jennifer-fulwiler/the-mystery-of-the-catholic-book-buyer
Writers, or anyone else, might be interested in her findings, but particularly publishers. It shows how demographics are easily skewed, an interesting topic in itself*, but publishers may find that they’ve been relying on rather faulty perspectives in the way they’ve been targeting their market.
*During the recent liberal media hoopla about the contraception mandate, I think I heard half a dozen TV reporters say emphatically that 98% of all Catholics use contraception.
(Wait a minute. The mandate covered only Catholic women … 98% of ALL …?)
Then I heard: 98% of all Catholic women use …
(Well, wait. Some of us—a lot of us, actually—are over 50 … Many of us have had hysterectomies … Some of us are married to men who’ve had vasectomies …)
Can we just think for a moment here? 98% of all Catholics use contraception. Really? That can’t refer to members of a religion—we’d have to be members of a different species.
It’s fascinating to see how the Guttmacher Institute ACTUALLY got the “98%” figure.
[See the Institute’s own website: http://www.guttmacher.org/media/resources/Religion-FP-tables.html%5D
They only polled Catholic women who
1) were aged of 15-44
2) not pregnant, post-partum, or trying to get pregnant
3) had engaged in the marital act within the past three months
They found, that of THESE women (a segment of the Catholic population that would exclude me, many of my friends, my mother, many of her friends … I could go on!), of THESE women, only 2% used NFP. (Interestingly, 11% of Catholic women under these circumstances said they used “no method” of birth control, while 4% responded “other”.)
So then certain politicians and media experts said: “Ah! only 2% use NFP. Ergo, 98% of Catholic women use birth control.”
Which leaves me with one of two conclusions. Either they are
So.Incredibly.Dumb.
or
So.Incredibly.Dishonest.
Not dumb. That took some pretty fancy number-juggling. Which leaves the other alternative….