New study suggests rampant ‘cafeteria Catholicism’ – Catholic World Report

Washington, DC Newsroom, May 6, 2024 / 6:37 PM (CNA).

Ryan Burge, a leading scholar of religion and politics, recently compiled data indicating that “cafeteria Catholicism” is rampant in the United States. In particular, 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 chooses which teachings of the Church 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 unrestricted abortion for all nine months of pregnancy.

Burge found that only 0.9% of Catholics agree with the church’s teachings on all three points. 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% figure is a low since GSS began collecting data in 1972.

“It’s not just many Catholics who disagree with the Church’s teachings — in fact, if you look at the data, it’s almost 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 past two decades, as found by Gallup.

Abortion

Despite the Catholic Church’s clear teaching that abortion is deeply immoral, Burge said, there is “clear majority support for elective abortion in almost all circumstances.”

More than 50% of Catholics support abortion when the mother’s health is at risk, the child is the result of rape, there is a “high risk of a serious defect in the baby” and when the family or mother don’t want to or can’t do. support another child.

Nearly 90% of Catholics support abortion in cases where the mother’s health is at risk. More than 80% of Catholics support abortion in cases of rape, and almost 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 the love of the living God,” most Catholics again disagree with the teaching of the Catholic Church. Church.

According to the data, 70% of Catholics support euthanasia, defined in the survey as a person’s ability to commit suicide in the face of an incurable disease. As Burge noted, Catholic support for euthanasia and assisted suicide has grown since the 1980s.

Capital punishment

In recent decades, the Church has increasingly expressed its opposition to the death penalty. In 2018, the Catechism of the Catholic Church was revised to reflect that opposition.

The Catechism recognizes that in the past, “the application of the death penalty by legitimate authority, after due process of law, has long been considered an appropriate response to the seriousness of certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme, means of protect well-being. .”

“Today, however, there is an increasing realization that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes. In addition, a new understanding of the meaning of state-imposed criminal sanctions has emerged. Finally, more effective detention systems have been developed, which guarantee citizens the necessary protection, but at the same time do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption,” the catechism indicates.

The catechism then quotes Pope Francis in stating that “the death penalty is not permissible because it is an attack on the sanctity and dignity of the person.”

Despite this, ARDA found that 61% of Catholics support the death penalty for convicted murderers. Support for the death penalty among Catholics has declined in recent decades, after peaking at 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% figure does not accurately reflect Catholics’ “buy-in” to the faith.

Pope called the study “very unfair” and said it “brings things together that 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” issue rather than a “doctrinal” one.

However, he agreed that there is still a gap between the church’s teachings and what many Catholics believe. This, he thinks, is due to what he called ‘the politicization of moral issues’.

“Politics unfortunately drives the conversation more than faith because we have a very worldly view,” he said. “So if there is anything positive to take from this study, it is that we certainly have a lot of work to do to convince our own believers of our teachings.”

“We have a lot of work to do, but that doesn’t mean our teachings are wrong,” he continued. “It is not the job of the Church to reflect the public opinion of our people, it is the job of the Church to say, ‘This is what Jesus says.’”