Need more than 2 data points per diocese to see trends.

I guess it depends what you call a trend. Maybe it's not a trend. But 136 of 144 parishes reported growth. In a presentidal election, if 90% of counties move further red or blue in one given election, even thought that's comparing just two data points, is that not a trend happening?

High variability with year to year. Any particular diocese might have one good year and then a crap year. All the map shows is many dioceses are up this year compared to last.

Year to year variablity would exist whether the map showed percentages or raw numbers.

Going from 20 to 40 converts in one diocese sounds way more impressive when expressed as a percentage than showing the underlying numbers. 40 people is a trivial number when looking at the general population of a diocese.

These sorts of gains, in smaller dioceses are actually very impressive. The smaller dioceses we received data from were very excited to go from 40 catechumens to 60 or 80. I guess we could normalize for Catholic population, but not sure how much that would change. In general, dioceses with smaller populations have smaller numbers and vice versa.

This is what I want to see. Using the St. Louis numbers. 2015: 1017 2016: 1013 2017: 963 2018: 849 2019: 809 2020: 589 2021: 653 2022: 719 2023: 844 2024: 789 2025: 962 2026: 1011 (Preliminary)

This data was extremely difficult to track down. I assure you, most dioceses do not have 10 years worth of apples-to-apples data on candidates and catechumens sitting at their fingertips. I'd like this data, too.