Many Catholics in Latin America and the United States favor allowing women to become priests, with some also supporting priestly marriages, birth control, recognition of same-sex marriages and communion for unmarried couples living together, a new survey shows.
Furthermore, approval ratings for Pope Francis remain high and he is seen as a source of significant change in the church, although his approval ratings have declined over the past decade of his pontificate.
Pew Research released the findings on September 26 as part of the Spring 2024 Global Attitudes Survey, an initiative of the Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures Project. Assessing religious change and its social impact on a global scale.
The Pew Research Center polled a total of 3,655 Catholics in six Latin American countries – Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru – with in-person interviews conducted in Spanish and Portuguese in Brazil Face-to-face interviews were conducted.
Pew also surveyed 2,021 U.S. Catholics in English and Spanish through a self-administered online survey. Participants without home Internet access were provided with an Internet-connected tablet.
According to the Vatican's Statistical Yearbook of the Church 2021, all countries selected by the Pew Research Center rank in the top quarter of global Catholic populations, with Brazil, Mexico and the United States ranking first, second and third respectively. Four. The six Latin American countries surveyed are home to about 75% of the region's Catholics.
Jonathan Evans, a senior researcher at the Pew Research Center, told OSV News that the data helps provide dimensions of understanding Catholics across Latin America.
Across the six countries studied, “there's a lot of underlying consensus on some things,” but “there's not uniformity of opinion on all of these topics,” Evans said. “There are differences.”
Evans told OSV News that he found it “very interesting” that “a majority of Catholics surveyed … said Pope Francis does represent a change in the direction of the church.” Among those who said Pope Francis is a Among those who changed, the more likely answer was that it was a major change rather than a minor change. “
Colombian Catholics give Pope Francis the highest ratings, with 88% saying they view him somewhat (34%) or very much (54%). Catholics in Brazil (84%), Mexico (80%) and Peru (78%) also express high approval ratings, followed closely by those in the United States (75%) and the pope's home country of Argentina (74%).
The lowest ranked country is Chile (64%), where a clerical abuse scandal in recent years has coincided with a marked decline in confidence in the Catholic Church, although not mentioned in the Pew report.
Over the past decade, Pope Francis' approval ratings have declined in all six Latin American countries and the United States, especially in Argentina, from 98% at the beginning of his pontificate to 74% now.
Still, Evans warned that the overall downturn “is not a shift toward a negative, overarching view. … What is certain is that Catholics generally have a favorable impression of the pope.”
The Pew Research Center data also shows that while Catholics who pray daily are less likely to disagree with the church's positions, there are significant gaps in support for church teachings on some issues, and the same is true for older Catholics.
In contrast, younger Catholics across Latin America are more likely to say the church should take steps to change its teachings, with 65% of Colombian Catholics aged 18 to 39 supporting the ordination of women, compared with those aged 40 and older. The proportion among apprentices is 49%.
When asked whether they thought the Catholic Church should allow women to become priests, 83% of Catholics in Brazil said “yes,” followed by 71% in Argentina, the pope's home country. Catholics in Chile (69%), Peru (65%) and the United States (64%) also largely support the idea, with slightly more or less than half in Colombia (56%) and Mexico (47%) .
The number among Latin American Catholics has increased since Pew asked the same question a decade ago, although responses from U.S. Catholics have remained at about the same level, the report said.
Catholic teaching affirms that, according to the universal tradition of the Church, the right to ordain priests is conferred only on men, and as St. John Paul II declared in his 1994 Apostolic Letter “Ordinatio Sacerdotalis”, the Church “has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women” “. “.” The pope added, “This judgment will be ultimately held by all the faithful of the Church.” “
Pope Francis has prioritized the greater participation of women in church life, vigorously reaffirming the church's teaching on priestly ordination and explaining in a 2022 interview that it stems from the Peter the Great dimension of the church, which recalled Since Christ gave authority to the apostle Peter, he has expressed the ministry dimension of the church.
In contrast, Pope Francis said, Marian principles – which reflect the example of Mary – express the mysticism and spirituality of the Church and its feminine nature as the spouse of Christ. “This is how the dignity of women is expressed,” the pope said in a 2022 interview.
Pew researchers acknowledged that three survey questions on birth control, married priests, and cohabiting unmarried couples receiving Communion relied on “simple, common phrases” and “involved a wide range of comprehensibility and theological nuance. trade-offs between differences”. Detailed explanations are provided in their report, which includes a brief summary of Catholic teaching on these issues.
“One of the things we have to balance is getting as close as possible to the theological nuances that are there … but also making the survey questions as understandable and understandable as possible to the respondents,” Evans said. He noted that Pew Consult with experts in the theological process. “In some cases, we might end up asking a very complex question that people hear and say, 'I don't know what you're talking about.'”
When asked whether they thought the Catholic Church should or should not allow Catholics to use birth control, a majority of participants in all seven countries responded positively, led by Argentina (86%) Topping the list is the United States (83%), Chile (80%), Colombia (76%), Peru (75%), Mexico (69%) and Brazil (63%).
Although the Church prohibits the use of artificial contraception and abortion, the question does not explicitly state whether the Church endorses natural family planning for married couples. This fertility awareness-based approach relies on a number of biomarkers to enable husbands and wives to take advantage of a woman's reproductive cycle to space the birth of their children for “good reasons” (which include physical, psychological). As Saint Paul VI declared in his 1968 encyclical Humane Humane,
The survey's questions about priesthood and marriage also weighed theological accuracy and methodological best practices. Pew Research Center researchers asked participants whether churches “should allow priests to marry”, with the United States (69%), Chile (65%) and Argentina (64%) saying they were in favor; Colombia (52%) and Brazil (50%) %) are evenly divided; Mexico (38%) and Peru (32%) largely disapprove.
However, Pew's wording confuses two separate issues: married men being ordained as priests, and allowing ordained priests to marry.
In the Latin Church – the largest of the 24 autocephalous churches that make up the global Catholic Church and is also led by the pope as Bishop of Rome – the appointment of celibate men as priests is the norm, with one exception where ordinations on a case-by-case basis have been Anglican or A married man who is a member of the clergy of certain Protestant churches. Under this exception, the Latin Church has ordained hundreds of married priests around the world, including about 125 in the United States. As a result, most Catholics have had only experience of celibate priesthood, although the centuries-old discipline of the Latin Church could theoretically be converted to celibate priesthood. Conforms to Eastern Catholic and Orthodox disciplines.
The other 23 Eastern Catholic churches, like the Orthodox Church, have a historical tradition of ordaining married and celibate men to the priesthood, although their bishops and monks have always remained celibate.
However, all Catholic and Orthodox churches prohibit priests from attempting to marry after ordination—a potentially worrisome situation involving an imbalanced power dynamic between priests and laity that raises questions about what is needed to effectuate sacramental marriage. Questioning the possibility of full and free consent.
The survey question on Holy Communion for unmarried cohabiting couples asked the church “whether Catholics should be allowed to partake in Holy Communion even if they are unmarried and living with a romantic partner.” Respondents from Argentina (77%), the United States (75%) and Chile (73%) said yes, while those from Brazil (59%), Peru (56%), Colombia (52%) and Mexico (45%) Respondents expressed a willingness for lower levels of support.
“In fact, there is no Catholic prohibition against unmarried cohabitation,” the report noted, citing the church's teaching that sex outside of marriage is a serious sin and that those who are aware of the serious sin should not be freed until they have received absolution. Receive Holy Communion. Through the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
Although not mentioned by the Pew Research Center, church teaching also views unmarried cohabitation as scandalous and can constitute a serious crime if it leads others to sin.
Peruvian Catholics surveyed by Pew (32%) are least likely to support the church recognizing marriages for same-sex couples, while majorities in Argentina (70%) and Chile (64%) support the idea. More than half of U.S. Catholics (54%) agree, while fewer Catholics in Mexico (46%), Brazil (43%) and Colombia (40%) agree.
According to Catholic teachings as laid down in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the covenant of marriage is reserved for man and woman. It states that through the sacrament of matrimony, they become “a permanent union of persons capable of knowing each other, loving each other, and God” and their love becomes “an image of the absolute and eternal love with which God loves mankind” and commands “the good of the spouse” and the gift of children.
Pew Research Center report “Many Catholics in U.S. and Latin America Want Church to Allow Birth Control and Let Women Be Priests” is available here.
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