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I began my morning surf of the web where I do every day, at the Drudge Report. Drudge linked to this story about the number of worldwide Muslims overtaking the number of worldwide Catholics.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Islam has overtaken Roman Catholicism as the biggest single religious denomination in the world, the Vatican said on Sunday.

Monsignor Vittorio Formenti, who compiled the Vatican’s newly-released 2008 yearbook of statistics, said Muslims made up 19.2 percent of the world’s population and Catholics 17.4 percent.

“For the first time in history we are no longer at the top: the Muslims have overtaken us,” Formenti told Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano in an interview, saying the data referred to 2006.

He said that if all Christian groups were considered, including Orthodox churches, Anglicans and Protestants, then Christians made up 33 percent of the world’s population — or about 2 billion people.

Are there more Muslims than Catholics? Seems so.

But I just spent the afternoon randomly attending my first University-sponsored Mass at Gesu (I always go in the morning) in several semesters, unexpectedly celebrating, along with hundreds of Marquette Catholics, the voluntary entrance of thirty-some students into the fullness of the Catholic faith, among them two full adult baptisms, four (may have been six) conversions to Catholicism, and over twenty Confirmations.

Like everything, these two events have me thinking about economics.

Here we have thirty-some individuals of their own accord voluntarily responding to the call to experience God in the highest manner possible, in the Catholic, Christian faith. It’s a free market-driven decision. In response to their own spiritual need, these men and women voluntarily sought out the one source that can optimally meet their spiritual and religious needs.

And it’s an event that has happened everyday, everywhere for two millennia.

Conversely, a religion whose name literally means “surrender” advances as most do through births but most prominently and recently, through the sword. For modern Muslims, faith is a voluntary measure; unfortunately, this is not the case for all. In fact, the system of conversion throughout history has tended towards forced rather than voluntary conversion.

Which system is built to survive?

Consider, if you can, economic systems of allocating resources. The 20th Century saw just about every system imaginable, from laissez-faire capitalism to social-democracy to collectivism. We kept hearing that freedom was archaic and that people needed to learn to live with more accountability by our government betters.

Of course, Western capitalism eventually prevailed over socialism because freedom is simply a better method of organizing resources. Allowing people the opportunity to freely join their interests and needs to their capabilities drove innovation, growth, and prosperity. Coercion proved unworkable.

Similarly, in the long haul, I’d bet on the religion in the West which made abundance and progress possible in the first place. It won’t need coercion to succeed (though coercion may drive it away at times, see also Europe), because the free market solution that permits individuals to seek the truth in its most highly allocative manner will always end up at the same place.

Congratulations to all those involved in the sacraments of initiation today!

• Simon Harak's September 2003 Speech at Marquette -- And My Official Introduction to Jesuits - June 12th, 2008
• "How Al Gore is Getting Fat off of a Starving World" - June 1st, 2008
• Best column I've read so far on Scott McClellan - May 31st, 2008
• So in other words, you have no leads or suspects at this time? - May 30th, 2008
• RITA GAHAGAN - May 24th, 2008