U.S. Catholics and the Death Penalty, Abortion, Etc.

[From The Tablet, Nov. 26, 2005.]

Catholic support for death penalty grows in US. NEARLY FOUR years of sexual abuse scandals in the United States have had little impact on the belief patterns of American Catholics, according to a new survey.

The research, which has been carried out every six years since 1987 by a group of sociologists at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, also shows that Catholic support for the death penalty has risen and an increasing number of Catholics disagree with church teaching on abortion.

Dr William D’Antonio, of the Life Cycle Institute at the university, said he had expected there to be a significant decline in church attendance in response to the scandals.

“We were surprised because we thought that if the impact had been deep there would be a greater drop in church attendance,” Dr D’Antonio told The Tablet. Since the last survey in 1999 weekly churchgoing had declined by 4 per cent among Catholics over 65, by 8 per cent among 45- to 64-year-olds and by 1 per cent among those under 44.

Dr D’Antonio added that the drop had been less among those who went to church once a month. “The theory is that if a person is hugely committed and the organisation betrays them they will struggle to change the organisation rather than leaving it,” he said. “People with low commitment require less of the organisation and so long as it fulfils the criteria of birth, marriage and death they will never leave.”

Meanwhile, the percentage of people who believed they could be a good Catholic without agreeing with the Church on abortion rose from 39 per cent when the first survey was carried out in 1987 to 58 per cent this year. Catholics also disagreed with the Church on the death penalty, with 57 per cent supporting its stiffer enforcement.

The survey also examined political affiliation, finding that 41 per cent of Catholics, the majority of them women, declare themselves Democrat and 37 per cent are Republican. However, 62 per cent of 18- to 24-year-old Catholics had voted for the Democrat challenger John Kerry in the last election.

The research was carried out by Gallup using a random sample of 875 practising Catholics.
Isabel de Bertodano, Washington, DC