Washington, D.C. Newsroom, May 6, 2024 / 18:37 pm (CNA).
Ryan Burge, a leading researcher on religion and politics, recently compiled data indicating that “cafeteria Catholicism” is rampant in the United States. Specifically, the country’s Catholics express widespread disagreement with the Church’s teaching on abortion, euthanasia, and the death penalty.
The term “cafeteria Catholic” refers to a Catholic who picks and chooses which Church teachings he or she affirms and adheres to. Washington, D.C., Cardinal Wilton Gregory recently used the term to describe President Joe Biden, who as president has advocated for unrestricted abortion through all nine months of pregnancy.
Burge found that only 0.9% of Catholics agree with Church teaching on all three of the issues. His conclusions were based on 2022 data collected by the Global Social Survey (GSS) and compiled by the Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA). Burge told CNA that the 0.9% number is an all-time low since GSS started collecting data in 1972.
“It’s not just many Catholics who disagree with the teachings of the Church — in fact, if you look at the data, it’s nearly all of them,” said Burge, who teaches political science at Eastern Illinois University.
This coincides with an overall 12% decline in Church attendance among Catholics over the last two decades, as found by Gallup.
Abortion
Despite the Catholic Church’s clear teaching that abortion is gravely immoral, Burge said, there is “clear majority support for elective abortion in almost every circumstance.”
Over 50% of Catholics support abortion when the mother’s health is at risk, the child is the result of rape, if there is a “strong chance of serious defect in the baby,” and when the family or mother either does not want or cannot support another child.
Nearly 90% of Catholics support abortion in such cases in which the mother’s health is at risk. Over 80% of Catholics support abortion in cases of rape, and close to 80% of Catholics support abortion for serious defects.
ARDA also reports that 17.7% of Catholics believe abortion should be illegal in all cases.
Euthanasia
Regarding euthanasia, which the Church teaches is morally unacceptable, and suicide, which the Catechism of the Catholic Church calls “contrary to love for the living God,” most Catholics again are not in agreement with the Church’s teaching.
According to the data, 70% of Catholics support euthanasia, defined in the survey as a person’s ability to commit suicide in the case of an incurable disease. As pointed out by Burge, Catholics’ support for euthanasia and assisted suicide has been growing since the 1980s.
Death penalty
In recent decades, the Church has been increasingly voicing its opposition to the death penalty. In 2018, the Catechism of the Catholic Church was revised to reflect that opposition.
The catechism acknowledges that in the past “recourse to the death penalty on the part of legitimate authority, following a fair trial, was long considered an appropriate response to the gravity of certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme, means of safeguarding the common good.”
“Today, however, there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes. In addition, a new understanding has emerged of the significance of penal sanctions imposed by the state. Lastly, more effective systems of detention have been developed, which ensure the due protection of citizens but, at the same time, do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption,” the catechism indicates.
The catechism goes on to quote Pope Francis in stating that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.”
Despite this, ARDA found that 61% of Catholics are in favor of the death penalty for convicted murderers. Support for the death penalty among Catholics has waned in recent decades after reaching a high of 81% in 1990.
‘A lot of work to do’
Monsignor Charles Pope, a Catholic author and pastor of Holy Comforter-Saint Cyprian Church in the Archdiocese of Washington, told CNA that the 0.9% number does not accurately represent Catholics’ “buy-in” to the faith.
Pope called the study “very unfair” and said it is “bringing things together which need to be analyzed separately.” He pointed out that the Church is clear in its teaching that abortion is intrinsically evil, while there is more leeway when it comes to the death penalty, which he described as a “prudential” rather than a “doctrinal” matter.
He agreed, however, that there is still a disconnect between Church teaching and what many Catholics believe. This, he thinks, is due to what he called “the politicization of moral issues.”
“Politics, sadly, is driving the conversation more than faith, because we are very worldly in our outlook,” he said. “So, if there’s one positive thing to take from this study it’s that we certainly have a lot of work to do to convince our own faithful of our teachings.”
“We’ve got a lot of work to do, but it doesn’t mean our teachings are wrong,” he went on. “It’s not the job of the Church to reflect the public opinion polls of our people, it’s the job of the Church to say: ‘Here’s what Jesus says.’”
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
I am most shocked by Euthanasia.
But what is surprising? I went to the church and heard the Gospel reading, very poignant, about Our Lord comforting His disciples re: His parting, how He will send them the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth and so on (this reading always makes me sad because I imagine that the promise of Christ could not really comfort the decouples who were attached to Christ and did not know that Spirit). The homily: “We all make appointments, make too many, cancel them, we become fretful. But we forget that God sent us the Spirit Who will help us to manage those appointments so no need to fret”.
Thus “the appointments” entirely obliterated the Gospel. The congregation’s minds were taken down so to speak. I do not know who taught our priests to start with “the story” like that but they often do.
Upon return I checked the commentaries to the Gospel. It was a very different world from “appointments”: the love of the disciples to Christ and also fear of being left alone, their new role of witnesses guided by that Spirit of Truth, the judgment of this world and Satan etc.
A day before I advised a priest to remove a card tapping machine with the huge glowing numbers $2, $5 from the Sanctuary. Yes, really from the Sanctuary – from an altar space. When a priest raises the Host the “money machine” is included creating a thick blasphemy. He answered he cannot see why it should not be there.
The flickering “$2, $5” kills the sense of sacredness. If there is nothing wrong with a desecration of a Sanctuary what is wrong with a desecration of a human life?
Tell us the name of the parish and pastor so we can all contact him. Remember, we’re all Catholics and have been baptized into the same Christ.
I would gladly accept your (and of other Catholics) help if you were in our (Australian) diocese. Before our Bishop was moved, I have formally addressed him re: such things. He was pious. Since he is left, I am on my own. I know that my vocation is to state the truth (especially re: Liturgy/images because I am an iconographer). I have tried to ignore that card tapping machine in the Sanctuary (literally glowing “$2” next to the side altar) out of tiredness but then I realized I could not be silent.
The most shocking to me was zero personal engagement of the priest with me. He did not see/hear and he did not want to see/hear. This is a trend in our parish now and the trend in the Church as a whole as I perceive it. It is bureaucratic “nice” non-engagement with people – all that while trumpeting the Synod of Synodality’s “love, go to the roots, discussions, empowerment of the laity” and so on. The priest failed to respond to my argument entirely while “nicely” thanked me for my “concern”. This is a paradigm of the “nice bureaucratic Church”. It is impenetrable and, brothers and sisters, it is where our Church is heading to.
To add to this, I will share with you something I witnessed while travelling years ago. I went to Mass at one of the churches on the outskirts of Sydney. I went straight to an old, huge, realistic Crucifix (sculptured, Spanish style, with blood etc.) – only to find out, a few cm below the Christ’s feet nailed to the Cross, the box for donation, also nailed to the wood of the Cross. A huge metal box with the slot and the lock. I was horrified and disgusted.
After Mass I spoke to a priest. When I told the box must be removed because it was unacceptable to have the money box included in the depiction of the Crucifixion, he got visibly angry with me and basically told me to go away. There was zero desire to understand.
To my mind, that zero desire to engage and to feel is the same whether re: liturgical abuse or re: euthanasia. It is all about the deadening of the soul.
How about helping the poor. Read Matthew 25.
There are less poor to help if you kill them off in the womb or euthanize them. Read Commandment 5.
🙂
1) The Catholic church is NOT a democracy.
2) You get out of it as much as you put into it.
About the death penalty, what exactly does “inadmissible” actually mean?
A change in doctrine or, instead, still a prudential judgment about applying a licit penalty, simply tightening what had already been said earlier and better by Pope John Paul II in the “Gospel of Life” (1995)? About the wording of John Paul II, Cardinals Ratzinger and Dulles offered commentary at the time:
Cardinal Josef RATZINGER (Benedict XVI): “Clearly the Holy Father has not altered the doctrinal principles…but has simply deepened (their) application…in the context of present-day historical circumstances” (National Review, July 10, 1995, p. 14; First Things, Oct. 1995, 83). Later, in a July 2004 letter to former-Cardinal McCarrick–a letter intended for all of the bishops but which came to light only when later leaked to the press–he wrote: “Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia….There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.”
Cardinal Avery DULLES concluded that traditional teachings on “retributive justice” and “vindication of the moral order” were not reversed by John Paul II’s strong “prudential judgment” regarding the use of capital punishment. The pope simply remained silent on these teachings. (“Seven Reasons America Shouldn’t Execute”, National Catholic Register, 3-24-02).
And, about capital punishment being “an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person,” now that we know from Cardinal Fernandez that human dignity is “infinite” (Dignitas Infinita), then any kind of punishment at all is also an attack on such human dignity!
TODAY, if 61% of Catholics still recognize the possible moral legitimacy of the death penalty (as distinguished from its application), then the share of Catholics agreeing with Church teaching on the three issues listed is higher than 0.9 percent. But, still abysmal…
After several decades of so many foggy and smiley-button homilies (many but not all), and social gospel stuff at the expense of the baseline Ten Commandments, and with maybe 90 % of Catholics not regularly attending Mass at all and probably not reading much of relevance—then of course (!) the general population of Catholics is media-marinated and poorly informed on moral theology.
Yes, as Anna says euthanasia is shocking. Shocking is the Pew statistic of 20% weekly Mass attendance, another survey has it lower, “Almost two-thirds of Catholics believe in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, but only 17% of adult Catholics physically attend Mass at least once per week, according to a newly published survey from Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate Sep 29, 2023.
Insofar as belief in the real presence when asked many will say, Yes, symbolic. Abortion is likely the more telling indicator of belief and practice. Although the views surveyed of Catholics in this article really comes down to who Catholics vote for. What a Catholic will say in response to a survey is a highly variable indicator including mood, unwillingness to be truthful. For example the majority of Catholics seem to have small interest in whether the candidate is pro choice, or whether the candidate supports Transsexual ideology.
As it stands Monsignor Pope’s bottom line is that Catholic belief has become politicized. Nonetheless what underlies politicization is accommodation if not loss of faith. What’s prevalent is a vague sense of belief absent of conviction on the key issues cited in the CNA article. Decades of terrible catechesis, toothless sermons, and clerical scandal have immensely hurt us. Much of it can be attributed to the clergy, the Laity opposition to Humane Vitae and the turn from spiritual to sensual fulfillment. Another conviction is that Synodality ideology as a means of retrieving the faith is destined for failure by its reliance on private opinion and prayerful revelations. What’s feasible is leadership, a miraculously [at this stage such a candidate would seem a miracle if only on the chance of a conclave in favor] strong, deeply devoted, faith focused pontiff to lift the Church out of the mire into the light of Christ.
“The catechism goes on to quote Pope Francis in stating that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.”
The death penalty has nothing to do with the dignity of criminals, and framing that way is deeply dishonest and manipulative. The death penalty is about justice, and the value and dignity of the victims of heinous crimes are the only considerations that need to be made in these situations.
I’m not sure of the point of these surveys of Catholics. Nominal Catholics? Lapsed Catholics? Mass-attending Catholics?
These surveys make me feel pressured/afraid that I must be a freak. That is probably not the intention but that is the effect on me.
“It is not possible to have Sacramental
Communion without Ecclesial Communion”, due to The Unity Of The Holy Ghost; “ It is Through Christ, With Christ, And In Christ, In The Unity Of The Holy Ghost (Filioque), That Holy Mother Church, outside of which, there is no Salvation, due to The Unity Of The Holy Ghost (Filioque) exists.
“You cannot be my disciples if you do not abide in My Word.”
A “lapse” Catholic, like a “faithless “ Catholic is an oxymoron.
Being in Communion with Christ is not a matter of degree, if you are not with Christ, you are against Christ.