Rocco Palmo, who covers Catholicism on his Whispers in the Loggia blog, is a terrific resource for coverage of his Church, and for coverage of religion in general. Get Religion has a long interview up with him that is well worth a read.

One of the things I most appreciate about Rocco’s blog is that he shows that a well-informed, well-connected specialist can report rings around professional religion journalists, at least on a particular beat. Here he is on what he considers the most underreported story on American Catholicism:

As the American Catholic beat goes, though, I’d have to highlight the story that I consider my “baby” — namely, the staggering demographic shift going on in the rank-and-file of the nation’s largest religious body. Sure, one chunk of that storyline — the data from Pew and others on ex-Catholics being the nation’s “second-largest denomination,” Anglos fleeing in droves, etc. — is very well-known (…and, admittedly, sometimes I wonder whether there’s an added reason it’s as well-known as it is?). As the long-view and the internals go, though, it seems to be at least as significant that a supermajority of today’s American Catholics under 30 (read: my generation) are Hispanic and, within as quickly as a decade, Latinos are set to comprise a majority of the roughly 70 million national membership, period. To be sure, the Anglo exodus has played a part in speeding up the time-frame, but in terms of raw numbers, the influx from immigration and birth-rates is at least keeping pace with, if not blowing out, the figures of those who are leaving.

Today, at least two of the church’s most storied domestic outposts (New York and Chicago) already have majority-Hispanic Catholic populations, and on the back of what’s now a 70% Latino contingent, LA’s archdiocese of 5 million (at least double its 1985 size) has become the largest local church in Catholicism’s five-century history in the US. It’s bigger than the cited older duo combined… and here’s the kicker: it’s still growing.

You’d think these realities would be sufficient to garner at least as much play as the “Death of the Church” meme. But experience shows that isn’t happening. Why not?

I highly encourage you to read the whole thing for his answer, and more. A big part of the problem, Rocco says, is that the Catholic Church still doesn’t understand how to communicate its story, in all its complexity. Rocco points out that errors that too many Catholics are quick to attribute to anti-Catholic bias in the media may simply be a matter of a journalist not fully understanding what he’s reporting on, and the Church failing to anticipate the gap in understanding. In other words, no malice on either side, but mutual ignorance. In my experience in newsrooms re: religion coverage, this is a good point. Most reporters (myself included) have a lot to learn about religion, and particular religions — but we’re open to it. Reporters are biased, like everybody is, but the good ones want to get the story correct, no matter their bias. Because our homeschooling co-op involves mostly Evangelicals, I have been introduced to a culture I don’t know much about. It’s interesting to me to see how little I know, and how some of my new Evangelical friends assume I know things that I don’t know, simply because I’m a Christian (that is to say, they assumed that X and Y are part of what all Christians know, when in fact it’s something specific to Evangelical Christianity; I’ve seen the same thing with some Catholics).

Anyway, I would love to read more about the massive demographic shift within Catholicism identified by Rocco. As I recall, Catholic friends in Dallas told me there are tensions in that diocese between the Anglo minority, which has most of the financial resources, and the Hispanic majority, which has most of the bodies. How will the Catholic Church — the clergy and the people alike — navigate this transition? What a terrific story to report on.