Today’s guest might make you reexamine everything you think you know about the current state of the Catholic Church in the USA. Fr. Tom Gaunt, SJ, is a Jesuit priest and the executive director of the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA). Since it was founded in 1964, CARA has conducted hundreds of social science studies of the Catholic Church. If you want to know how many priests were ordained last year, or how many Catholics go to Mass weekly vs. once or twice a year, CARA is the place to go. Host Mike Jordan Laskey asked Fr. Tom for a bird’s eye view of the state of the church, and that overview provided surprising stats time after time. Be ready to be surprised. Learn more about CARA: https://cara.georgetown.edu/ AMDG is a production of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States. Subscribe to AMDG wherever you get podcasts, and leave us a nice review on iTunes.