The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

CRISIS Magazine - e-Letter

November 19, 2002

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Dear Friend,

Well, the results are finally in. And believe me, they are surprising.

As I promised you last week, we're now ready to unveil the results from our 2002 survey of Catholics in America. You can view the complete poll results on our Web site at http://www.crisismagazine.com. I encourage you to see the results for yourself -- there are some very unexpected numbers there. In the meantime, I wanted to point out a few of the trends that I found to be the most interesting.

But first, let me give you a little background information about the poll. The survey was administered nationwide to 1,000 self-identified Catholics in the days immediately following the election. Questions asked in the poll covered everything from the sex-abuse scandal to popular culture and hot-button political issues.

As a way of breaking down the numbers, we tallied the results according to whether a person was an "active" or "inactive" Catholic. For this poll, active Catholics are those who attend mass at least four times in a typical month; inactive Catholics are those who attend mass no more than three times a month or not at all.

The breakdown proves what many of us already expected: Mass attendance is a crucial factor in understanding Catholic opinion. Those who regularly attend mass are much more likely to be in agreement with Catholic teaching than those who aren't as active -- an important distinction that the media and other sources tend to overlook.

THE SCANDAL

On the issue of sex abuse in the Church, Catholics across the board have been shaken by the events of this past year. While most people are still confident in the moral teachings of the Church (55%), there is still a disturbingly large percentage of Catholics who are not. A full 50% of inactive Catholics are less confident in the Church's teachings.

What is even more surprising is that 29% of active Catholics feel the same way. That's a large breech of faith with people who would normally be the most ready to trust the moral teachings of the Church.

Bishops, take note: 52% of all Catholics are dissatisfied on some level with the way you have responded to the crisis. Again, the results shift slightly when broken down by a person's activity in the Church: 52% of active Catholics are at least somewhat satisfied, while 62% of inactive Catholics are not.

But even among active Catholics, that margin of approval is slim. The bishops obviously have a lot of work to do to restore the trust of Catholics across the spectrum.

There's one thing these two groups of Catholics CAN agree on, though: The overwhelming majority of both active and inactive Catholics believe that these acts of abuse are still happening today. It seems that all Catholics must hope that the newly revised sex-abuse norms not only address past injustices but also sufficiently protect our children in the future.

POLITICS AND VOTING

Catholics also tend to be divided on the issue of politics. Overall, however, 67% of Catholics approve of the job Bush is doing as President, with a slightly higher percentage (71%) of active Catholics approving. When asked what American they admired most, President Bush was the single most often named figure.

By a wide margin (56% to 20%), Catholics believe that President Bush is supportive of Catholic values, with both active and inactive Catholics agreeing in equal numbers.

However, this is not to say that the majority of Catholics consider themselves Republican. On the contrary, 36% of Catholics identified themselves as Democrats, 32% said they were Independent, and only 27% called themselves Republican. Among active Catholics, the figures are largely the same: 36% Democrat, 30% Republican, and 27% Independent.

According to the respondents in the survey, the overall Catholic vote in the most recent midterm elections favored Democrats 37% to 32%. Among active Catholics, the vote was evenly split between Democrats and Republicans at 36%. Oddly enough, however, a majority of both active and inactive Catholics thought that Republican control of Congress was a good thing.

The most obvious conclusion to be drawn is that active Catholics continue to be "ticket-splitters" and swing voters. Even active Catholics, a group that tends to vote Republican more consistently, can't be considered entrenched in the Republican Party.

In terms of foreign policy issues, a majority of Catholics seem to support taking some kind of action against Iraq, with 55% of all Catholics favoring an attack if Iraq did not comply with UN resolutions.

Inactive Catholics are more supportive of action against Iraq than active Catholics by a significant margin (60% to 52%). This may in part be a reflection of the bishops' widely publicized statements emphasizing diplomatic over military approaches, opinions that may hold more sway with active Catholics.

SOCIAL AND MORAL CONCERNS

When CRISIS conducted a similar survey in 1998, we asked Catholics if they felt there was "a decline in individual morality in our country today." 75% of Catholics believed that there was. Today, the feeling is largely the same: 71% of Catholics say that we still have a crisis of declining morality in society. (Given the recent abuse scandal, it is almost surprising that this number isn't higher.) 73% of Catholics, and a majority of both active and inactive Catholics, believed that popular culture is to blame in undermining the values of young people.

Some issues concerning morality and social policy are fairly clear-cut. For instance, substantial majorities of both active and inactive Catholics oppose defining marriage to include same-sex unions. Most Catholics feel that the level of legal immigration should be left as-is or decreased to some degree. An overwhelming majority of all Catholics favor school-tuition subsidies for children of low-income families.

The level of agreement in these responses is somewhat surprising -- immigration and school vouchers are not specifically moral teachings of the Church, leaving room for Catholics in good standing to disagree on them. What is more surprising, however, is the varying response on issues such as abortion and the death penalty, issues that are more closely tied to the Church's moral teaching.

Take, for example, the responses to the question of the death penalty. 59% of all Catholics -- and the majority of both active and inactive Catholics -- favor the death penalty to some degree. The support among active Catholics is lower than that among inactive Catholics, though, again pointing to the possibility that active Catholics are more open to the teachings of the Vatican and the bishops.

It is also possible that these numbers are higher due to the post-9/11 world -- and more recently, the post-D.C. sniper world -- in which we are now living, where the death penalty seems to be a more reasonable option. Still, this is decidedly out of line with the Church's insistence that we must try to oppose the death penalty whenever possible.

What is most surprising, however, is the response to questions on abortion. 75% of active Catholics referred to themselves as pro-life. However, when we asked them if they would favor legal restrictions on abortion, 36% of active Catholics (and 44% overall) said they OPPOSED such a measure. The percentage opposed to legal action is even higher among inactive Catholics: 55%.

However, the results were different when we asked if hospitals receiving government funds, including Catholic ones, should be forced to provide contraceptive and abortion services. Respondents were overwhelmingly opposed to the measure.

How can this answer be consistent with the response to the abortion question when they seem to contradict one another? It may be the case that many Catholics have fallen prey to a Mario Cuomo kind of logic, one that says that it's ok to be "privately" pro-life and "publicly" pro-abortion. I know we've all heard the age-old excuse, "I believe that X is wrong, but I don't want to force my opinions on anyone else."

Personally, this kind of answer drives me nuts. Some issues are a matter of preference or opinion, such as the idea of school vouchers. Issues like abortion, however, leave no room for argument: the Church teaches that it is wrong, end of story. If 75% of active Catholics are pro-life and really believe that abortion is morally offensive -- that it is murder -- it's no longer a question of opinion.

And yet Catholics still seem afraid say so.

On the flip side, Catholics seem to be just as wary of others forcing their morality on THEM. You can see this idea in Catholics' opposition to making hospitals offer contraceptives or abortions. Just as they don't want to force their opinions on others, they certainly don't want those "others" forcing their opinions on them. At least in the case of the hospitals, the response seems fitting.

THE WRAP-UP

There certainly is a lot to think about when looking at the results of this poll. What I think is the most important point to note, however, is the distinct difference of opinion between Catholics who are active in their faith and those who use "Catholic" as a cultural or ethnic label only.

The opinions of Catholics across the spectrum must be taken into consideration -- how else can we get an accurate picture of the current state of the Church? However, it will be those Catholics who are active in their faith that will provide a truer example and understanding of what it means to be a Catholic in America.

I urge the media to join me in making this crucial difference clear when considering Catholic opinion on Church teaching, morality, and politics. An accurate understanding of Catholics requires it.

But really, this is just the tip of the iceberg. There is a lot more to see in the poll and many more ways of reading the results. I really urge you to check out the poll yourself -- the responses really are fascinating, and I think it gives us all a better gauge for measuring Catholic opinion today. Maybe it will help us understand ourselves better, too.

If you have any questions or other ideas about the poll, please e-mail me. I'd love to hear what you think of the results and see if you come up with different conclusions than I did.

This definitely gives us all some food for thought.

Talk to you later,

Deal

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