On Religion: Pollsters Need To Ask New Questions About Catholic Life And Faith
(ANALYSIS) Theology news rarely sends shock waves through Catholic offices around the world, but this headline did: “Just one-third of U.S. Catholics agree with their church that Eucharist is body, blood of Christ.”
The key word in that famous Pew Research Center survey was “transubstantiation,” which the report defined as the belief that the “bread and wine used for Communion become the body and blood of Jesus Christ.”
It mattered, of course, whether the Catholics in this survey went to Mass. Nearly 70% of self-proclaimed Catholics said the consecrated bread and wine were mere “symbols,” but 63% of those who reported weekly Mass attendance affirmed transubstantiation. Insiders noted that this meant that 37% of observant Catholics didn't embrace this crucial church doctrine.
“Any effort to measure human behavior is fraught with peril and complications," noted John C. Green of the University of Akron, reached by telephone. A trailblazer in studies of politics, pulpits and pews, Green has often served as a Pew Research consultant.
“If people say they go to Mass once a week, how certain can you be that they're telling the truth? … When it comes to doing surveys about what believers say and what they do, you can never ask too many questions.”
Now, as Catholics prepare for a new pope, Pew has released new insights into lines of tension and division among American Catholics. Five years after the "transubstantiation" study, a new survey includes more evidence that "U.S. Catholics" disagree with many core Catholic doctrines and, thus, want a "more inclusive" church.
The tricky question, again, was how to define "U.S. Catholic," since the survey said:
— 84% of U.S. Catholics think the church should embrace the use of birth control.
— 83% support couples being allowed to use in vitro fertilization (IVP) to get pregnant.
— 68% back the ordination of women as deacons.
— 63% think the church should allow married priests.
— 59% support women serving as priests.
The Pew summary noted: “When asked to choose which of two contrasting statements comes closer to their view, 60% of U.S. Catholics say the church 'should be more inclusive, even if that means changing some of its teachings,' while 37% say the church 'should stick to its traditional teachings, even if that means the church gets smaller.’”
However, Catholics who said they went to Mass "once a week" or more were 17-20% less likely to welcome doctrinal changes on contraception, IVP, female deacons and married priests. Among more observant Catholics, 56% said the church should not ordain women as priests and 66% said the church “should not recognize the marriages of gay and lesbian couples.”
However, 59% of weekly-Mass Catholics said the “church should permit people to receive Communion even if they are unmarried and living with a romantic partner.”
Obviously, there are doctrinal divisions among the "Sunday Mass" Catholics included in this survey. To make things even more complex, noted Green, there are signs that Catholics over the age of 65 are more likely to be progressives than young Catholics who have chosen to remain in the church or who have joined as converts.
“At this point, it appears that many young Catholics may be headed in one direction, while older Catholics — that's the Baby Boomers who came of age in the '60s — are headed in another," he said.
In future surveys, researchers will need to study the emerging differences between Catholics in older, established dioceses and those worshipping in rapidly growing flocks in the Bible Belt and the heartland, said Green.
It will be important to study parishes with rising numbers of marriage rites, adult converts, infant baptisms and students attending growing Catholic schools, or being home-schooled.
The bottom line: Catholics in large families are more likely to support traditional doctrines on marriage and sexuality. Also, these families may produce more new priests.
“It’s still important to ask how often Catholics go to Mass, but there are other questions we need to be asking," said Green. Questions about family structures, education and fertility may show where Catholicism will grow, instead of decline.
“The further you get from active participation in the life and work of the Catholic Church," he said, "the more American Catholics begin to look like everyone else in America.”
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Terry Mattingly is Senior Fellow on Communications and Culture at Saint Constantine College in Houston. He lives in Elizabethton, Tennessee, and writes Rational Sheep, a Substack newsletter on faith and mass media.