Poll: Faithful Catholics are an endangered species

[DonViejo]

"Zero percent of British Catholics now look to religious leaders for guidance as they make decisions"

LINDA WOODHEAD, RELIGION DISPATCHES

This article originally appeared on Religion Dispatches.

Religion DispatchesPope Francis is full of surprises. This month he launched a survey of Catholic opinion in order to inform a special synod on the family scheduled to meet in Rome next October. Not surprisingly, it’s caught many national conferences of bishops on the hop. Under John Paul II and Benedict XIV they’d got used to a Vatican which looked inwards rather that outwards for authority. A favourite text was Lumen Gentium’s passage which insists that the magisterium of the Pontiff requires “religious submission of mind and will.” A survey of ordinary Catholics sits oddly with this stance. What can it mean?

Catholic opinion is divided on the answer. Conservatives say the survey’s designed to do no more than expose how the church’s irreformable teaching on family and sex needs to be strengthened. It will aid in the re-confessionalisation of the faithful, helping gather strayed sheep back to the fold. Reformists say the opposite. They welcome the initiative as a sign that Francis really cares about what ordinary Catholics think, and that Vatican II’s claim that the Church is “the whole people of God” is at last being made good.

A closer look at the questionnaire supports the conservative view over the reformist one, for it’s not a survey in any sense that a social scientist would recognize. The 38 questions are larded with theological jargon, and will leave many of the faithful scratching their heads and Googling the Catholic Encyclopedia. Take question 1a, for example:

Describe how the Catholic Church’s teachings on the value of the family contained in the Bible, Guadium et spes, Familiaris consortio and other documents of the post-consiliar Magisterium is understood by people today?

full article
http://www.salon.com/2013/12/01/new_poll_faithful_catholics_are_an_endangered_species_partner/

[rug]

1. Thoughful Catholics are not unfaithful Catholics.

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

2. I daresay that the overwhelming majority of Catholics

Have never read Guadium et Spes or Familiaris Consortio. Heck, I'll bet most have never heard of either one.

There are a couple of questions that expect the person filling out the questionnaire not only knows the theological doctrine of Natural Law, but accepts that doctrine. There are questions that amount to "How should we get people to accept the teachings of Humanae Vitae, as if those teachings should be unquestioned.

There was one question, "Is there a law in your country recognizing civil unions for people of the same-sex and equating it in some way to marriage?" to which I responded, "Why are you asking me? Don't you know?"

[IrishAyes]

3. My copy must've gotten lost in the mail.

Agree with both previous posts, btw.