Thomas J. Burns reported the number of Catholic marriages — in which Catholics administer the Sacrament of Matrimony to each other — in the United States in five-year intervals in a July 5, 2023, report. His numbers were obtained from annual statistics gathered by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), affiliated with Georgetown University (“Dying Rituals—Catholic Weddings, Part 2,” Catechist Café). They show a decrease in each five-year interval from 1970 through 2020, and a further drop from 2020 to 2022, the latest year for which he could obtain data.

1970: 426,309
1975: 369,133
1980: 350,745
1985: 348,300
1990: 326,079
1995: 294,144
2000: 261,626
2005: 207,112
2010: 168,400
2015: 148,134
2020: 131,827 [a pandemic year]
2022: 98,354

In addition to the data for these years from CARA and Burns, I found two more data points:

1965: 352,458 (“American Catholic Statistics 1965-2021,” Faith Survey, undated, from CARA.) You will notice a huge increase from 1965 to 1970 and then a huge drop from 1970 to 1975.

2024: 107,051 (Zenit Staff, “Catholic Weddings in the USA: Where Numbers Thrive, Where They Don’t and Why,” Zenit.org, May 22, 2025, which uses the 2024 Official Catholic Directory and suggests that there are differences in marriage rates between larger and smaller dioceses.) This evidences a substantial increase from 2022 to 2024. Also, the report notes that it includes Latin-rite only. So once the Eastern churches are added, the number will be higher.

(Note: Some marriages not performed in a Catholic church by a Catholic priest can be valid Catholic marriages with permission of the bishop. These circumstances are catalogued by Burns in an earlier article of his: “A Dying Ritual: Catholic Weddings?” Catechist Café, June 5, 2023. One would think that such marriages are included in parish, and therefore, diocesan or national statistics, but he did not say and I did not investigate. Maybe they would be statistically irrelevant.)

The decline in the number of marriages can be graphically illustrated by noting the average number of weddings per parish. Burns wrote in his July 5 piece, “There were 16,429 parishes in the United States last year [2022], meaning the average parish is performing under 6 weddings per year.”

There is a lot that could be written about these statistics — and other statistics. We could consider changes that have occurred in the percentage of Catholic adults who are married in the Church and changes in the numbers of marriages of two Catholics versus mixed marriages. We could consider the reasons for the decline, such as fear of commitment, the pandemic, cohabitation, destination weddings outside the Church, marrying too quickly to be married in the Church, moving from countries where people must marry civilly before religiously, and the cost of a wedding. Similarly, we could assess the effect of this decline on the lives of those who, married or cohabiting, are not married in the Church, on their children, on their parish (if they belong to one), and on their community.

Australia

In my research I found relevant statistics for Australia. So, the United States is not alone in this decline.

In March 2025, the Australian National Centre for Pastoral Research published a graph and analysis of “Baptisms, [First] Communions, Confirmations and Marriages in Australia, 1991-2021.” It relied on the statistics for each Australian (arch)diocese contained in the Vatican’s annual Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae.

The graph shows approximately 25,000 marriages in 1991, 18,000 (1996), 16,000 (2001), 15,000 (2006), 12,000 (2016), precisely 5,460 (2021). The analysis states:

In the last three decades, there has been a notable decrease in the number of marriages celebrated each year [in Australia], culminating in only 5,460 marriages recorded in 2021. Marriages between Catholics have seen a decline of 73 per cent over this period, while the decline of marriages between Catholics and non-Catholics is even more pronounced at 82 per cent. In summary, the overall trend regarding sacraments and marriages indicates a decline that aligns with the decreases noted in religious affiliation in the [Australian government’s] Census and the patterns of Mass attendance during this period.

Diocese of Arlington

Since I spent 25 years in the Diocese of Arlington, I researched statistics for this diocese going back to 2005. There were two principal difficulties. First, its statistics are reported twice each year, once for the national Official Catholic Directory as of December 31 of each year, and once for its annual financial reports as of June 30. Second, except for some financials showing year-over-year changes, there is never a comparison to previous years so no reader of these statistics can learn of any trends.

By the way, it was my research on these diocesan statistics that led me to the problem of quantifying the number of Catholics in the world and in the United States, which I described in my previous blog post (here).

In 2005, the Diocese reported 1,430 marriages (total, including mixed marriages). In 2024 the number was either 1,325 or 1,375 (depending on which report is used). While this decrease of under 7% does not mirror that at the national level of 50% for the same time period (see Burns’s and CARA’s statistics provided above: 207,000 to 107,000 [plus the Eastern churches]), it remains the case that the general population, and the Catholic population, of the Diocese increased over these 20 years. The general population increased from 2.6 million to 3.4 million and the number of registered parishioners increased 300,000 to 430,000.

I’ll make three observations that help demonstrate the decline. First, the current number of parishes in the diocese is 70. Therefore, each parish has fewer than 20 weddings per year.

Second, let’s contrast the number of people being confirmed to those being married (in the Church). The Diocese generally confirms people at age 14. In 2005, there were 5,800 confirmations. Nineteen years later, in 2024, there were 1,325 (or 1,375) marriages, 400 of them mixed. Therefore, there were between 2,250 and 2,350 Catholic individuals married. Of course, we cannot strictly expect that the number of people confirmed would be married 19 years later in the same diocese. (Not everyone confirmed ever married, civilly or religiously, anywhere. Furthermore, not everyone confirmed in the diocese in 2005 remained in the diocese. Some left and, if they got married, got married elsewhere. And not everyone confirmed in the diocese who remained in the diocese and who got married, got married in 2024.) That said, roughly speaking 2,250 (or 2,350) Catholics being married is nowhere near what we would expect given the number of confirmations 19 years earlier. Without supplying you with numbers, a similar observation could be made with respect to the number of baptisms or First Communions.

Third, let’s apply the national rate of marriage of the general population to the Catholics registered in parishes in the Diocese. The national rate, according to the National Center of Health Statistics of the CDC for 2023, was 6.1 per thousand of total population (not just adults over age 18). (For your information, in 2000 it had been 8.2. National Marriage and Divorce Rate Trends for 2000-2023.) The number of registered parishioners in the Diocese for 2023 was 443,000 (or 433,000). Let’s use the latter. When we apply the national rate of marriages for the general population in 2023 of 6.1 per thousand, the number of Catholics in the diocese marrying that year would have been 2,641. In fact, it was close, but 86% of the national rate. There were a total of 1,322 marriages consisting of 355 Catholics in mixed marriages and 1,934 in 967 non-mixed marriages for a total of 2,289.

No matter how you look at it, the decline in the number of Catholics who marry in the Church is shocking.