Sin Statistics & Trends

Note: The primary purpose of this website is to guide you to heaven. The previous sections were written to provide evidence that there is a God interested in the salvation of your soul. Jesus Christ is that God and he established the Catholic Church to lead you to a moral life and heaven. This section provides a statistical overview of the present pagan age and its immoral practices, so that you can gain an awareness of how far into darkness we have come.

Posted: 7/25/2020 Updated: 12/13/2020

Table of Contents for this Section

Immorality – Sex, Violence and Idolatry
The Natural Family
Sex & Violence
Sex
Violence
Idolatry

In the previous section, I gave an overview of Christian history up to the present pagan age. The following graphical analysis will show, in detail, how thoroughly pagan immorality has infiltrated society. But before I get to that, it may be useful to understand why God sees certain behaviors as sinful, while post-modern people find those same behaviors acceptable and even praiseworthy.

Immorality – Sex, Violence and Idolatry

Catholic moral theology is based on principles that emerge from the Natural Law, some of which God revealed in the Ten Commandments. One can think of Natural Law as the owner’s manual for the human race. Using the autonomous or self-driving car as an analogy, the designers’ objective is to move the car and its occupants from point A to point B efficiently and safely. Similarly, God designed the human mind and body to arrive safely at its destination of heaven. But unlike the autonomous car which is programmed by its designers, humans have intellect and free will. God expects us to use these gifts to discern the narrow moral path that leads to everlasting life.

The last answer is correct. Moral truth is a reflection of God’s nature, and the human nature he imbued in us.

“From a Christian worldview, God doesn’t simply tell us what is righteous, He is righteous. Goodness and righteousness are attributes of his innate character. While it’s tempting to think there isn’t anything God couldn’t do, this is not the case. God cannot act or command outside of his character. He is innately logical and moral; it is impossible for Him to create square circles or married bachelors, just as it is impossible for Him to sin. Objective moral truths are simply a reflection of God’s eternal being. They are not rules or laws God has created (and could therefore alter recklessly), but are instead immutable, dependable qualities of his nature reflected in our universe. They exist because God exists (not because God created them or recognized them later). The Bible describes God as omnipotent and capable of doing anything he sets out to do. God’s choices, however, are always consistent with His moral and logical nature; He never sets out to do something contrary to who He is as God.” J. Warner Wallace

Since God cannot change, you and I must change in order to enter heaven. However, our human nature has been corrupted since the fall of Adam and Eve. In order to overcome this tendency, each person must humbly submit himself to the will of God, as summarized by Jesus in Lk 10:25-27:

A lawyer asked Jesus, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He responded, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.”

All sin ruptures your relationship with God and/or your neighbor, and typically falls into three categories –sex, violence and idolatry.

As you will see in the following graphs and commentary, all these sins are far more common today than they were just 60 to 120 years ago. The future here on earth is trending toward a “brave new world” of selfishness and sin; its fruit is the eternal death of hell. Is this the future you want for yourself and your loved ones?

The Natural Family

“He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future.” Adolph Hitler

The most effective point of attack for the triumph of evil is the natural family – man, woman and children. As a virus invades the cell of the body and uses it to reproduce itself, so Satan attacks the family and evil is replicated throughout society.

This chart was constructed by the Pew Research Center and it demonstrates the disintegration of the natural family. Ideally, every child should have the right to be raised by his own biological parents, in a truly committed relationship of lifelong marriage. In recent years, however, less than half of children can expect to be raised by both biological parents still married to each other! This shocking fact occurs because one or more adults considers his own happiness more important than that of an innocent child.

Divorce and fornication are the two most common reasons for this situation. Divorce often results in single parenthood and/or a family with one parent unrelated to the child. Fornication typically results in single parenthood, cohabitating parents uncommitted to each other, or abortion. All these results are grave sins, harmful to all the participants and scandalous to society.

Divorce is the 2^nd most stressful life event for adults and young children, after the death of a spouse and a parent, respectively. If you want to know why divorce is so devastating to children, read Leila Miller’s book Primal Scream, which contains the stories of 70 adult children of divorce. The forward to the book is at this website under the title Divorce Enablers.

This chart of divorce rate trends shows that rates have quintupled in the last 100 years. The number of children affected in recent years has surpassed 10 million.

Catholic annulment, a legal declaration that a marriage was invalid from the beginning, typically benefits neither the child nor the adults. The child’s pain is not lessened by a legal decree; he still wants his mom and dad to be together again. The adults are told they now can remarry without committing the grave sin of adultery. This is usually highly misleading for two reasons. First, the rates of annulment are so astonishingly inconsistent in different jurisdictions (0 to 100%)! Second, the tribunal decision is not binding on God, when he examines the soul after death.

Sex & Violence

“There’s a well-known, documented connection between sex and violence. Not so much a causal effect, but a general state of neurological arousal.” In Demolition Man with Sylvester Stallone

Sex and violent aggression have often been linked to each other, as well as to the hormone testosterone. Testosterone levels in males are typically 10-20 times greater than in females. The peak blood level of testosterone in the human male occurs in his early twenties, as do the peak rates of murder and rape, sins committed almost exclusively by males (Murder: 7 to 1; Rape: 99 to 1). Other correlations make a strong circumstantial case for the tight relationship between sex and violence. *

“All the available evidence indicates that there is a positive correlation between involvement with illegal drugs and sexual intercourse prior to marriage (Table 6.3.2).”
Criminal/delinquent individuals (Table 6.3.3a) and persons with conduct disorders or psychopathy (Table 6.3.3b) had more sex partners than did the population in general.
All studies (Table 6.3.4a) concluded that delinquents and criminals “begin engaging in sexual intercourse earlier than do persons who are law-abiding.” This is also true of persons who are diagnosed as antisocial (Table 6.3.4b).
“According to all the available evidence, blacks commit more violent offenses than do whites (Table 2.3.2a). The extent of the differences has usually exceeded a ratio of 3:1.” Also, “In the United States, the abortion rate for black women is almost five times that for white women.” In 2018, births to unmarried black vs white women as a percentage of all births were 69% and 28%, respectively.

* Ellis, Beaver & Wright. Handbook of Crime Correlates. 2009.

Homicide rates, while not a reliable variable for understanding the magnitude of changes over time (see the section on violence), does help us understand when major cultural shifts took place and what may have caused them. These major inflection points identify two sexual revolutions in the 20^th century and four turning points, which emphasize how tightly illicit sex and aggressive violence are interwoven in society.

1905 – Growth of the movie industry explodes, beginning with the Nickelodeon. Increasing portrayal of sex/violence. The Victorian era ends and 1^st sexual revolution begins.
1933 – The Catholic Legion of Decency rating system curbs sex/violence in movies. The 1^st sexual revolution pauses.
1960 – The Pill is approved by the FDA and the power of the Legion of Decency recedes. Sex is separated from childbearing, since the fear of pregnancy is diminished. The 2^nd sexual revolution begins.
1992 – Famous basketball player Magic Johnson has AIDS. It’s not only a homosexual disease, but now also a heterosexual disease. Due to widespread fear, the 2^nd sexual revolution pauses.

More evidence for the association between sex and violence is illustrated in the next pair of graphs, which describe how (1) the changes in teenage non-marital births and (2) sexual experience by age 18 both track with the homicide rate since 1900.

Sex

Sexual depravity is so widespread in our society that a large majority will identify with the morality of the man in the first picture, rather than that of the man in the second picture.

“A man’s morality, like his religion, is a personal affair best left to his own conscience.”

“The notion that we indeed did and do own our own minds and bodies, and that anything from church or state that limits that is inappropriate and inconsistent with the … society that America is supposed to be.”

Hugh Hefner – The Playboy Philosophy

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Jesus (Mt 5:27-28)

“… out of the heart of man, come [sex outside marriage, unrestrained sexual immorality, etc.]. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a man.” Jesus (Mk 7:21-23)

The graphs below demonstrate that sexual immorality has been trending higher for most of the last 100 years. Sexual promiscuity, the practice of having multiple sexual partners, was rare in the early 20^th century; by 1990, females averaged three sexual partners, while men typically had 5 or 6. Pre-marital sex, whether measured by self-reported sexual activity by age 19 or non-marital births, increased about ten times in the last 100 years. Apparently, men and women are putting their trust in Hugh Hefner rather than in Jesus Christ.

Violence

Sexual freedom seems harmless at first, but moral decay never stops there. Illicit sex is the “soft underbelly” which the evil one attacks first, softening us up to accept even more degradation, until the culture is awash in violence.

Soft-core porn leads to child porn and sex slavery.
The Sexual Revolutions and contraception lead to abortion.
Fornication leads to homosexual “marriage” and transgenderism.
Sexual license leads to narcissism, selfishness, and crimes of every kind.
No-fault divorce leads to a war on children, who grow up with an unrelated father or none at all.
The Women’s Movement, based on sexual freedom, leads to a war on men and an epidemic of loneliness and suicide.
Radical autonomy leads to a godless angry divided society at war with itself, and an epidemic of mass murder.

The sinful act of abortion shows the tight connection between sex and violence. The one bright spot in the data is that the abortion rate has been declining continuously since its peak in 1980. At the present rate of decline, abortion will be almost non-existent in 2050. It is not clear from the data why the decline has been so persistent, but it is probably a combination of several factors including more effective contraception (also a sin), restricted access and anti-abortion attitudes.

The greatest event in human history, the Incarnation of Jesus, took place at his conception in the womb of Mary, nine months prior to his birth. His abortion would have kept the gates of heaven closed for all eternity.

Excellent data on trends in violent crime have existed since 1960 (see graph). Murder, one of the four components of violent crime, was once the gold standard for analyzing trends in serious crimes of violence. However, according to a recent analysis, “Improvements in emergency medical services have dramatically suppressed murder rates in the U.S. between 1960-99.” This explains why the crime indices of aggravated assault, rape and robbery rose 2-3 times higher than the murder rate index from 1960 to 2018.

The best measure of serious crime is now aggravated assault. The FBI “specifies that this type of assault is usually accompanied by the use of a weapon or by other means likely to produce death or great bodily harm.” Therefore, in theory, any case of aggravated assault could result in the death of the victim.

With that in mind, you can see that serious crimes such as aggravated assault are now 2-3 times greater than in 1960, and 40 times greater than in 1900 (see graph of murder rates since 1900 above)!

Suicide has also been on the rise, as shown in this graph. It now occurs at 5 times the 1900 rate. Since the Great Depression began in 1929, it did not precipitate the increase in suicide, which had been going on for two decades by then. More likely, it was a byproduct of the 1^st sexual revolution of the 20^th century.

The increase in loneliness, as indicated by the rise in single person households (inset), is probably one factor driving this suicide increase in recent decades. Another is the decrease in faith (see trends in religiosity farther down the page).

Mass murder accompanied both the 1^st and 2^nd sexual revolutions. In the 1920s it took the form of mafia slayings of rival gang members. Since 1960, the innocent have been targeted as well. Thankfully, these events are still rare, but they generate enormous fear and anxiety in society, especially when the media create an atmosphere of hysteria and politicization of these events.

Idolatry

Today, idolatry is seen in the phenomenon of radical autonomy or extreme individualism, the freedom to define good and evil irrespective of God’s truth. One manifestation of this trend is the growth of the “nones,” those who are religiously unaffiliated. Most of this group say they are “spiritual and not religious.” Translated, this means that no one tells them what to do. According to the latest polls, this group was 6% of the population in the 1990s and now comprises 26%. Forty percent of the youngest generations (those under 40 in 2020) are “nones.”

Another manifestation of radical autonomy is the trend in liberal churches, including the Catholic Church, to encourage its members to doubt its perennial teachings on sexuality. This was most evident in the widespread dissent surrounding Pope Paul VI’s encyclical on contraception in 1968. In that era and continuing to the present day, most priests and bishops are content to avoid discussing sexual immorality, advising us to “follow your conscience.” Translated, this means that you and I can decide what is right and what is wrong. In practice, this is lived out as unadulterated selfishness.

Statistics and trends show that one major consequence of this attitude is the death of liberal Catholicism. These two graphs illustrate how this will play out in the future. Some time between 2030 and 2050, the Catholic Church in America will cease to exist as a force in society.

While the death of liberal Catholicism is a good outcome, there is no certainty as to what will rise from its ashes. We can only pray that the younger generations will see what has happened and create an invigorated Catholic Church, based on orthodox Catholic morality, that will have as its main goal the salvation of souls. Ora pro nobis.