A Decade of Change

Do U.S. Roman Catholics still believe that parochial schools have a place in modern life? Despite some fall-off in attendance at the schools, the answer was a resounding yes from 89% of nearly 1,000 subjects surveyed by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center. But that is one of the few Catholic opinions to remain firm over the past decade. In a report just published in the Critic, Priest-Sociologist Andrew M. Greeley and three colleagues compared the results of the new survey with a roughly parallel poll taken in 1963 and found that many Catholic habits and attitudes had changed:

RELIGIOUS DEVOTION. Seventy-one percent of the Catholics surveyed in 1963 attended weekly Mass. Now only 50% go. Why the drop? Few are repelled by changes in the liturgy, such as the English Mass. The "new church," in fact, is widely approved. Most who stay away from church say that they do so because they are working, too old or tired, or simply lazy. Furthermore, only 53% now think that missing Mass is "certainly" a sin for those who can easily attend. On the other hand, in the new survey, 6% of those questioned had attended a Catholic Pentecostal prayer meeting, a figure that if extrapolated to the U.S. Catholic population, would put the number of charismatic experimenters at well over 2 million. In another upward trend, recipients of weekly Communion have doubled, from 13% to 26%.

SEXUALITY. A decade ago, 45% of Catholics approved artificial contraception. Now a full 83% approve it. Only 12% of Catholics approved sexual relations between an engaged couple in the 1963 survey; by 1974 the number approving had jumped to 43%. Remarriage after divorce was accepted by 52% a decade ago, but by 73% in the new survey. Approval of an action for others, however, does not mean that Catholics would necessarily act the same way themselves. Fully 70% of the survey respondents, for example, thought that legal abortion should be available for married women who did not want more children, but 73% of the women interviewed declared that they definitely would not have an abortion themselves. As for a married clergy, 79% said that they would favor such a change.

AUTHORITY. Along with its teaching on sex, both the church's authority and its image have lost ground. In 1963, a solid 70% thought that it was "certainly true" that Jesus handed over the leadership of his church to Peter; ten years later that proportion had fallen to 42%. Only 32% of Catholics now subscribe fully to the dogma of papal infallibility. The old fascination with religious vocations has also dimmed. A decade ago, two-thirds of the respondents said that they would be very pleased if their son became a priest. Now only half of those queried feel the same way.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.