Where Catholics marry in the United States: A look at the numbers

According to data published in the most recent (2024) edition of The Official Catholic Directory, 107,051 marriages took place in the previous year in the Latin-rite dioceses of the United States. The Directory classified 85,171 of them as Catholic marriages and 21,880 as interfaith marriages.

Thirty-two dioceses had over a thousand marriages. The ten dioceses with the highest number of marriages are Los Angeles (5,096), Chicago (3,400), New York (2,914), Philadelphia (2,611), Rockville Centre (2,453), Galveston-Houston (2,432), Orange (1,891), Fresno (1,832), Dallas (1,699), and San Bernardino (1,550).

The same number of dioceses—thirty-two—had two hundred or fewer marriages. The ten dioceses with the lowest number of marriages are Fairbanks (23), Lubbock (51), Anchorage-Juneau (62), Rapid City (70), Great Falls – Billings (74), Gallup (74), Crookston (84), Baker (92), Dodge City (97), and Steubenville (103).

Comparing the number of marriages to the number of Catholics in each diocese, I focus in this article on the dioceses with the proportionally highest and proportionally lowest number of marriages in the Church. Why, in the judgment of officials of these dioceses, is this the case? And to what extent do Catholic marriage trends in the nation’s dioceses simply mirror civil marriage trends in the nation’s states?

Of the 175 Latin-rite dioceses in the United States (excluding the Archdiocese for the Military Services, for which the Directory does not publish Catholic population figures), the median diocese (88th-ranked Reno) had one marriage for every 453 Catholics. Twenty-six dioceses had at least one marriage for every three hundred Catholics. On the other hand, thirty-seven dioceses had less than one marriage for every 750 Catholics; fifteen of these dioceses had less than one marriage for every thousand Catholics.

There is significant variation, then, in the ratio of marriages to Catholics in the nation’s dioceses. To examine the outliers, a Catholic in the Diocese of Salina is over 15 times more likely to marry in the Church than is a Catholic in the Diocese of Lubbock. (The variation in the ratio of diocesan seminarians to Catholics is even greater: a Catholic in the Diocese of Rapid City is over 89 times more likely to become a diocesan seminarian than is a Catholic in the Diocese of Brownsville, according to statistics published in the Directory.)

Wedding-rich dioceses

The 10% of Latin-rite dioceses in the United States with the highest ratio of marriages in the Church to Catholics are the following:

• Salina, KS (216 marriages; 1 per 178 Catholics)
• Tulsa, OK (286 marriages; 1 per 211 Catholics)
• Savannah, GA (373 marriages; 1 per 214 Catholics)
• Kansas City – St. Joseph, MO (497 marriages; 1 per 227 Catholics)
• Wichita, KS (462 marriages; 1 per 235 Catholics)
• Shreveport, LA (141 marriages; 1 per 236 Catholics)
• Nashville, TN (462 marriages; 1 per 239 Catholics)
• Oakland, CA (1,517 marriages; 1 per 242 Catholics)
• Gaylord, MI (171 marriages; 1 per 256 Catholics)
• Grand Island, NE (178 marriages; 1 per 258 Catholics)
• Victoria, TX (272 marriages; 1 per 260 Catholics)
• Fort Wayne – South Bend, IN (532 marriages; 1 per 262 Catholics)
• Owensboro, KY (194 marriages; 1 per 263 Catholics)
• Amarillo, TX (160 marriages; 1 per 264 Catholics)
• Sioux Falls, SD (393 marriages; 1 per 268 Catholics)
• Evansville, IN (262 marriages; 1 per 269 Catholics)
• Knoxville, TN (279 marriages; 1 per 270 Catholics)

What makes these dioceses such wedding-rich dioceses, as it were? Officials of eight of these dioceses graciously shared their insights.

Tulsa

Audrey Stubblefield, Coordinator of Marriage and Family Life of the Diocese of Tulsa, said that “the culture of Oklahoma traditionally has seen young adults marrying at a younger age than average. The Diocese of Tulsa is two-thirds rural parishes, which may contribute to the higher marriage rate, as many of the rural areas have more traditional values.”

“The parishes are smaller than the national average, with more community and parish legacy families,” she continued. “In Tulsa specifically, many young adults return to work in the area after college.”

Outreach to immigrants, she said, has also contributed to the high wedding rate:

We are also experiencing a consistent increase in immigrants, specifically individuals speaking Spanish and Burmese. The predominantly larger Spanish speaking communities have made a concerted effort to form and prepare couples to return to the sacraments. For example, our largest parish has 6,000 families and is predominantly Spanish speaking. This parish has made a huge effort to catechize and prepare couples that may have been together a long time to be sacramentally married in the Church.

Kansas City – St. Joseph (Missouri)

Bishop James Johnston of Kansas City – St. Joseph said that “there is a robust Catholic young adult culture here which attracts those who desire to be married.”

“I have met young adults who intentionally moved here because of that culture, hoping to find a spouse,” he said. “This is fed by our local Catholic young adult apostolate, City on a Hill.”

“I also have heard that Kansas City has the largest number of FOCUS ‘alumni’ in the nation living in our metro area,” he continued. “Along with this, St. Paul’s Outreach has a presence here, and the fact that we are so close to Benedictine College means that we have a large number of Catholic young adults who not only want to be married but be married in the Church.”

Bishop Johnston added:

Finally, our diocesan marriage preparation program, Thrive, is top shelf. For those preparing for marriage, it has a great reputation. Maybe that indirectly makes a difference too.

“Along with the contributing factors that Bishop Johnston mentioned, I think there is a correlation between the lower divorce rate in our part of the country with higher marriage rates in the Church,” said Dino Durando, director of the Office of Marriage and Family Life. “It is widely thought that divorce has a significant impact on marriage rates among the children of divorce.”

Durando found that “being a child of divorce myself” was “the greatest obstacle in my mind to getting married at all. Individuals like me still choose to marry and can have long-lasting marriages, but we are not the majority among children of divorce.”

Nashville

Dr. Brad Piper, director of faith formation for the Diocese of Nashville, said that his diocese “is deeply committed to fostering a culture of marriage and family life.”

“Under the leadership of Bishop J. Mark Spalding, who has a strong desire to promote the Sacrament of Marriage, we strive to be intentional in our formation opportunities and embrace a robust sacramental life,” said Piper. “These priorities, along with the pastoral care available at our parishes, create a foundational environment that may lead to a higher number of Catholic weddings.”

Gaylord

Renee Shimmel, director of communications of the Diocese of Gaylord, said that the diocese’s “total number of weddings is skewed by the large number of destination weddings held in northern Michigan.”

“With northern Michigan’s beautiful lakes and landscape, especially in the summer and fall, many couples plan their weddings here,” she explained. “It is also a place where many people often have wonderful memories from vacationing at their family cottages in the diocese, attracting them to request their wedding here. Lastly, the diocese has a shrine that celebrates outdoor Masses and permits weddings.”

Grand Island

Heather Eichholz, J.C.L., chancellor of the Diocese of Grand Island, said that “at the heart of the diocese is a feeling of personalized attention and community.”

“Parishes within the diocese are typically more closely knit because of the smaller numbers of people who live in the area and have lived there for generations,” she said. “Children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and so on return to ‘the family church’ to receive the Sacrament of Marriage.”

“Priests and deacons in the Diocese of Grand Island play an essential role” in fostering this connection, she continued. She explained:

Priests in the diocese dedicate themselves to personally knowing their parishioners from the oldest to the youngest and dedicating time to their needs, including providing guidance and support for couples considering marriage. The diocese’s priests invest time in preparing a couple for marriage instead of utilizing a couple’s retreat or a married couple. It is also not uncommon for the priest to know the couple’s families going back generations. This personalized attention and family knowledge have nurtured and sustained marriages.

“The Diocese of Grand Island is located in an agricultural region where traditional values, including the importance of marriage, are still strongly upheld and practiced,” she added. This community support “works in cooperation with the Church to provide additional resources and services crucial in encouraging and helping maintain marriages.”

Victoria

Very Rev. Jacob Koether, episcopal vicar of evangelization and catechesis for the Diocese of Victoria, also spoke of a regional culture that supports marriage. He explained:

Our small-town, rural diocese values faith and connection to the Church. We have many active Catholic schools which provide a vision of family life in the Church through the positive examples of parents who are living their faith. We have beautiful churches that people want to get married in. And here it’s a lot easier for couples and families to have a personal relationship with our priests and other faithful couples.

Father Koether said that “we are also intentional from the diocesan level to support marriage and family life through date nights, retreats like Engaged Encounter, formation programs like Missionaries to the Family, and marriage preparation programs like Witness to Love.”

Fort Wayne – South Bend

Lisa Everett of the Office of Marriage and Family Ministry of the Diocese of Fort Wayne – South Bend said that “our annual statistics on weddings in the diocese include weddings celebrated on the campuses of the University of Notre Dame and Saint Mary’s College.”

Everett noted that “in 2024, there were 102 weddings celebrated on these campuses, the vast majority of which occurred at Notre Dame. So this is certainly a contributing factor to our higher ratio of weddings per number of Catholics.”

“I would say that the Midwest tends to be more conservative when it comes to traditional religious beliefs and practices, which affects how people view and aspire to marriage,” she continued. “In addition, the cost of living in our region is less than many other parts of the country. It is not uncommon here to see large families.”

Everett also spoke of a diocesan culture in which “so many people, including many well-formed, faith-filled parents, are intentional about passing on to the next generation the truth, beauty and goodness of our faith”:

I believe that our diocese has, over the years, helped to create a “culture of marriage” among our young people. Bishop Kevin Rhoades, and Bishop John D’Arcy before him, the presbyterate, the diocesan curia, the diocesan newspaper—all of the institutions and infrastructure—are on the same page with regard to the importance of marriage as the Church understands it and are intentional about promoting it, particularly through the lens of Pope St. John Paul II’s theology of the body.

“Our high schools hire theology teachers who are on fire with the Catholic faith, including our teachings on marriage, sexuality, and respect for human life,” she added. “Our diocesan marriage preparation program celebrates God’s plan and integrates theology of the body throughout by exploring the ways that husbands and wives are called to live out the total, mutual gift of self in all aspects of their married life together.”

Sioux Falls

Chris Motz, chief of staff of the Diocese of Sioux Falls, spoke of a “pedagogical impact from a family culture” in South Dakota.

“Lots of South Dakotans have strong roots in farms, ranches, and small towns—marriage and family mean a lot in these places,” he said. “This provides a fertile seedbed for the basics of the faith to take root and do their good work in marriage and family life.”

“Our priests,” he added, “are really good at emphasizing the simple but powerful elements of the faith, like a consistent and rich sacramental life, faithfulness to prayer, [and] fidelity to the tradition of the faith as it’s been handed on to us.”

Civil marriage rates and wedding-rich dioceses 

Are the dioceses with the highest wedding rates (relative to the number of Catholics) located in the states with the highest rates of civil marriage (relative to other states)? Only sometimes.

Last November, Dr. Krista Westrick-Payne, assistant director of the National Center for Family and Marriage Research at Bowling Green State University, published a study of marriage rates in the fifty states and the District of Columbia in 2023. In the top 10% are Utah, Alaska, Colorado, Kansas, and North Dakota. Thus, the relatively high diocesan marriage rates of the Dioceses of Salina and Wichita are reflective of the surrounding culture, even if comparisons of Catholic marriage rates and civil marriage rates are somewhat apples-to-oranges comparisons.

Kentucky, Indiana, and Texas are among the states in the top 20% of civil marriage rates, so the presence of the Dioceses of Owensboro, Fort Wayne – South Bend, Evansville, Victoria, and Amarillo among the dioceses in the top 10% of marriage rates is not unexpected.

Tennessee and Nebraska are among the states in the top 30% of civil marriage rates, and South Dakota, Missouri, and Oklahoma fall in the top 40%. The Dioceses of Nashville, Knoxville, Grand Island, Sioux Falls, Kansas City – St. Joseph, and Tulsa are swimming with the surrounding marriage current, as it were, but are swimming farther and faster than one might expect.

However, Georgia, California, Michigan, and Louisiana have below-average marriage rates: Georgia ranks #31, California ranks #38, Michigan ranks #43, and Louisiana ranks #50. In the Dioceses of Savannah, Oakland, Gaylord, and Shreveport, one finds a marriage culture that is significantly stronger than that of the surrounding culture, with the Diocese of Shreveport’s high rate especially notable. These dioceses are swimming strongly against the current, with Shreveport akin to a champion salmon.

The Diocese of Oakland is one of only two Latin-rite dioceses in the nation with a higher number of interfaith marriages (in Oakland’s case, 979) than of Catholic marriages (538). The diocese’s ability to lead relatively high numbers of interfaith couples to marry in the Church is notable; its practices in this area may be of benefit to other dioceses. Unfortunately, the diocese did not respond to a request for comment on insights into the reasons for its relative success in this area.

Just as dioceses with the highest wedding rates are not necessarily located in the states with the highest rates of civil marriage, the states with the highest marriage rates do not necessarily include dioceses with high wedding rates:

• no. 1 Utah has the Diocese of Salt Lake City (ranked #122)
• no. 2 Alaska has the Archdiocese of Anchorage-Juneau (#72) and the Diocese of Fairbanks (#96)
• no. 3 Colorado has the Archdiocese of Denver (#110) and the Dioceses of Colorado Springs (#161) and Pueblo (#52)
• no. 4 Kansas has the Archdiocese of Kansas City (#23) and the Dioceses of Dodge City (#117), Salina (#1), and Wichita (#5)
• no. 5 North Dakota has the Dioceses of Bismarck (#33) and Fargo (#54).

Several dioceses in marriage-rich states, then, have weaker marriage cultures—and at times, far weaker marriage cultures—than one might expect.

Dioceses with the lowest marriage rates

The 10% of dioceses in the United States with the lowest ratio of marriages to Catholics, according to statistics published in the Directory, are the following:

• San Francisco, CA (491 marriages; 1 per 961 Catholics)
• Brooklyn, NY (1,337 marriages; 1 per 987 Catholics)
• Colorado Springs, CO (194 marriages; 1 per 1,014 Catholics)
• New York, NY (2,914 marriages; 1 per 1,118 Catholics)
• San Diego, CA (1,215 marriages; 1 per 1,137 Catholics)
• Worcester, MA (229 marriages; 1 per 1,165 Catholics)
• Portland, ME (245 marriages; 1 per 1,172 Catholics)
• Sacramento, CA (889 marriages; 1 per 1,186 Catholics)
• Boston, MA (1,426 marriages; 1 per 1,258 Catholics)
• Laredo, TX (265 marriages; 1 per 1,266 Catholics)
• Fort Worth, TX (785 marriages; 1 per 1,355 Catholics)
• El Paso, TX (525 marriages; 1 per 1,363 Catholics)
• Gallup, NM (75 marriages; 1 per 1,435 Catholics)
• Las Vegas, NV (427 marriages; 1 per 1,452 Catholics)
• Brownsville, TX (758 marriages; 1 per 1,569 Catholics)
• Phoenix, AZ (864 marriages; 1 per 2,318 Catholics)
• Lubbock, TX (51 marriages; 1 per 2,722 Catholics)

I asked officials from fifteen of these dioceses to share their insights about the relatively low marriage rates in their dioceses. Five graciously did so.

San Diego

John Prust, director of the Office for Family Life and Spirituality of the Diocese of San Diego, said that “many of the societal trends that are bringing marriage rates down across the board are only accelerated in wealthier, urban areas. I would imagine smaller dioceses tend to be more rural and aren’t as impacted by these trends, or at least not as severely.”

“I recommend reading Brad Wilcox’s book Get Married, which discusses these currents in great depth,” he added. “The ‘vocations crisis’ doesn’t just refer to Holy Orders anymore.”

Worcester

Raymond Delisle, chancellor and director of communications of the Diocese of Worcester, said that the nation’s dioceses may use different criteria in determining the number of Catholics when they supply data annually to the Directory.

“We err in favor of estimating higher numbers of Catholics in our diocese, given unregistered and undocumented parishioners,” he said. “Many dioceses may rely just on registered numbers of households. As a result we do not put a lot of stock in percentages, since there is no standard for counting ‘number of Catholics.’”

“We have a strong marriage preparation program and policy” that “may deter some who are simply looking for a wedding in a pretty church,” he added. “We also have a policy of no Catholic weddings outside of a church,” which he said could also affect the ratio of marriages to Catholics.

“Again, percentages are only valuable when everyone applies the same metrics,” he concluded. “More important to us is that our numbers are running fairly consistent to showing some improvements.”

Portland (Maine)

“Maine is the oldest state in the nation based on the highest median age in the country, which could contribute” to the diocese’s low marriage rate, said Molly DiLorenzo, director of communications of the Diocese of Portland.

“The percentage of self-reported Catholics is relatively low in Maine at 20%,” she continued. “The number of registered parishioners is significantly lower than that. Lastly, the overall marriage rate, religious and civil, in Maine has been dropping over [the past] ten years.”

Fort Worth

“In my experience, those couples who get married in the Church do so because it is consistent with their regular participation in the sacramental life of the Church,” said Jason Whitehead, director of marriage and family life for the Diocese of Fort Worth. “In other words, those couples I see in our marriage preparation are Catholics actively practicing their faith and who possess at least a basic faith in Church teaching. The same applies to Catholic parties in mixed marriages.”

“I have come to see our low percentage of marriages in accord with ecclesiastical form to be a phenomenon consistent with the larger issue of the ‘non-practicing’ Catholic and the large percentage of Catholics denying aspects of our faith, such as the Real Presence of our Blessed Lord in the Most Holy Eucharist,” added Whitehead, who also serves as the diocese’s director of evangelization and catechesis. “My impression is that our country’s larger urban areas experience more of these issues.”

Las Vegas

“The Archdiocese of Las Vegas believes that the lower number of sacramental marriages in our archdiocese reflects several key demographic and cultural factors,” said Montie Chavez, director of communications.

“Las Vegas is a uniquely transient and dynamic city, with a young population and a significant number of under-forty residents who may delay marriage or return to their place of origin for marriage,” he explained. “Nevada’s lack of a state income tax also makes it a popular destination for retirees.”

Civil marriage rates and dioceses with the lowest wedding rates

Are the dioceses with the lowest wedding rates (relative to the number of Catholics) located in the states with the lowest rates of civil marriage (relative to other states)? Only sometimes.

According to the National Center for Family and Marriage Research’s study of 2023 marriage rates, the states in the bottom 10% are Delaware, Louisiana, New Mexico, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. Rounding out the bottom 20% are New York, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and Maine, in addition to Washington, DC.

Thus, the presence of the Archdiocese of New York and the Dioceses of Brooklyn and Portland (Maine) among the dioceses in the lowest 10% of marriage rates is not unexpected. The same, perhaps, could be said of the Diocese of Gallup (map), which includes portions of New Mexico (which ranks #49 in civil marriage rates) and Arizona (which ranks #26).

Nevada, California, and Massachusetts are among the states in the lowest 30% of marriage rates. It could be said, then, that the Archdioceses of Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Boston, along with the Dioceses of Sacramento, San Diego, and Worcester, are located in states in which dioceses must swim against the current in fostering marriage—but they are swimming a bit more weakly, for whatever reasons, than one might expect.

Arizona has a marriage rate close to the national average (#26). The Diocese of Phoenix has the second-lowest marriage rate in the nation, suggesting that the diocesan marriage culture is significantly weaker than that of the surrounding culture.

Even more notably weak, relative to the surrounding culture, are the marriage cultures of the Dioceses of Brownsville, El Paso, Fort Worth, and Lubbock, all located in Texas, a state that ranks in the top 20% in its marriage rate. As previously mentioned, two Texas dioceses—Amarillo and Victoria—rank in the top 10% in diocesan marriage rates. The Diocese of Lubbock borders the Diocese of Amarillo, yet a Catholic in the Diocese of Amarillo is over 10 times more likely to marry in the Church than is a Catholic in the Diocese of Lubbock, according to data published in the Directory.

Perhaps most notably weak of all, relative to the surrounding culture, is the marriage culture of the Diocese of Colorado Springs, located in the state with the third-highest marriage rate in the nation.

“I spoke to our diocesan marriage and family life office, and the staff told me that we would need a lot more time to adequately research your question than we have available,” said Veronica Ambuul, the diocese’s director of communications, after I offered diocesan officials a ten-day period for comment on the diocesan marriage rate.

Just as dioceses with the lowest wedding rates are not necessarily located in the states with the lowest rates of civil marriage, the states with the lowest marriage rates do not necessarily include dioceses with low wedding rates:

• no. 51 Delaware, which ranks lowest among the fifty states and the District of Columbia, has the Diocese of Wilmington (#126), which also extends into no. 30 Maryland (map)
• no. 50 Louisiana has the Archdiocese of New Orleans (#85) and the Dioceses of Alexandria (#35), Baton Rouge (#61), Houma-Thibodaux (#80), Lafayette (#66), Lake Charles (#109), and Shreveport (#6). In varying degrees, then, all of Louisiana’s dioceses have surprisingly strong wedding cultures relative to that of the surrounding culture.
• no. 49 New Mexico has the Archdiocese of Santa Fe (#111) and the Dioceses of Las Cruces (#94) and Gallup (#171)
• no. 48 Connecticut has the Archdiocese of Hartford (#157) and the Dioceses of Bridgeport (#143) and Norwich (#158)
• no. 47 Rhode Island has the Diocese of Providence (#145)

Some dioceses in states with the lowest marriage rates, then, have stronger marriage cultures than one might expect, while others have unsurprisingly low rates relative to other dioceses.

Diocesan size and wedding rates

Of the twenty-six dioceses with at least one marriage for every three hundred Catholics, only three (8th-ranked Oakland, 18th-ranked Indianapolis, and 24th-ranked Raleigh) have more than 200,000 Catholics, and none has more than 400,000 Catholics.

In general, the larger a diocese is, the less likely it is to be wedding-rich:

• Among dioceses with 400,000-600,000 Catholics, the most wedding-rich are the Diocese of Arlington (1 wedding per 327 Catholics, ranked 34th), the Archdiocese of Cincinnati (1 wedding per 351 Catholics, 43rd), and the Archdiocese of St. Louis (1 wedding per 352 Catholics, 44th).
• Among dioceses with 600,000-1,000,000 Catholics, the most wedding-rich are the Archdiocese of Washington, DC (1 wedding per 443 Catholics, ranked 84th), the Diocese of Fresno (1 wedding per 518 Catholics, 100th), and the Diocese of Austin (1 wedding per 529 Catholics, 105th).
• Among dioceses with 1,000,000 or more Catholics, the most wedding-rich are the Archdiocese of Philadelphia (1 wedding per 449 Catholics, ranked 86th), the Diocese of Rockville Centre (1 wedding per 534 Catholics, 107th), and the Archdiocese of Chicago (1 wedding per 611 Catholics, 125th).

Apart from the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, all nineteen dioceses with a million or more Catholics fall below the diocesan median of one wedding for every 453 Catholics. That is not to say there is little difference among the nation’s largest dioceses: a Catholic in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia is over five times more likely to marry in the Church than is a Catholic in the Diocese of Phoenix.

At the same time, the presence of a major city in a diocese does not destine the diocese to have a below-average wedding ratio:

• Philadelphia is the sixth-largest city in the nation. The Archdiocese of Philadelphia ranks just above the diocesan median, at 86th, with one wedding for every 449 Catholics.
• Jacksonville is the tenth-largest city in the nation. The Diocese of St. Augustine, in which Jacksonville is located, ranks 53rd, with one wedding for every 365 Catholics.
• Indianapolis is the sixteenth-largest city in the nation. The Archdiocese of Indianapolis ranks 18th, with one wedding for every 271 Catholics.

The population of a diocese, far more than the population of the largest city in the diocese, correlates with a lower ratio of marriages to Catholics.

As noted in a previous article on diocesan seminarians, Pope Francis observed in his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium that “there are ecclesial structures which can hamper efforts at evangelization” (n. 26). He demonstrated a willingness to split up existing dioceses: between 2020 and 2024, he created thirty new dioceses and eparchies around the world from the territory of larger dioceses and eparchies.

While there is no guarantee that splitting up American dioceses with 600,000 or more Catholics, or a million or more Catholics, will lead to higher rates of Catholics marrying in the Church, the idea surely merits consideration.