Economic theory holds that competition makes firms vigorous, whereas monopoly firms tend to be lazy. When this principle is applied to religious organizations, it leads to the prediction that the average level of religious commitment among Roman Catholics will vary inversely to the degree that a society is Catholic. This prediction is confirmed by analysis of data for 45 societies. The lower the average level of Catholic commitment, the greater the proportion of the population that claimed to be Catholic. Moreover, the recent explosive growth of Protestantism in Latin American is concentrated in the “most Catholic” nations.
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