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As
the pontificate of Benedict XVI winds down, many American Catholics express a
desire for change. For example, most U.S. Catholics say it would be good
if the next pope allows priests to marry. And fully six-in-ten Catholics say it
would be good if the next pope hails from a developing region 
like South
America, Asia or Africa.
At
the same time, many Catholics also express appreciation for the traditions of
the Roman Catholic Church. While about half of U.S. Catholics (46%) say the next pope should “move
the church in new directions,” the other half (51%) say the new pope should “maintain
the traditional positions of the church.” And among Catholics who say they
attend Mass at least once a week, nearly two-thirds (63%) want the next pope to
maintain the church’s traditional positions.
The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center, conducted Feb. 13-18 among
1,504 adults (including 304 Catholics) also finds that nine-in-ten U.S.
Catholics have heard a lot (60%) or at least a little (30%) about Benedict’s
resignation. Just one-in-ten Catholics say they have heard nothing at all about
his resignation.
In
a separate national survey conducted Feb. 14-17 among 1,003 adults (including
212 Catholics), three-quarters of U.S. Catholics (74%) express a favorable view
of the pope. Benedict’s ratings among Catholics now stand about where they were
in March 2008 (just before his U.S. visit) and are lower than they were in
April 2008, when 83% of U.S. Catholics expressed favorable views of him. Benedict’s
predecessor, Pope John Paul II, was rated favorably by upwards of 90% of U.S.
Catholics in three separate Pew Research polls in the 1980s and 1990s.
U.S.
Catholics voice dissatisfaction with Benedict’s handling of the sex abuse
scandal in the church. Among Catholics who say they followed news of the
pontiff’s resignation, nearly two-thirds (63%) think he has done a poor or
“only fair” job of addressing the sex abuse scandal, while 33% give him
excellent or good ratings for his handling of the issue. Benedict gets better
marks for his handling of interfaith relations; 55% of Catholics say he has
done a good or excellent job promoting relations with other religions, while
37% say he has done a poor or “only fair” job in this area. But the public is
more negative now than in 2008 in its views both on Benedict’s handling of the
sex abuse scandal and on his handling of interfaith relations. Immediately
following his 2008 visit to the U.S., 49% of American Catholics gave the pope good
or excellent ratings for his handling of the sex abuse scandal, and 70% said he
was doing a good or excellent job promoting interfaith relations.
A Look Ahead to the
Next Pope
Half
of U.S. Catholics (51%) say the next pope should maintain the traditional
teachings of the church, while about the same number say the next pope should
move the church in new directions (46%).
But
among Catholics who say they attend Mass at least once a week, nearly
two-thirds (63%) say the new pope should maintain the traditional positions of
the church, while about one-third (35%) say the new pope should move the church
in new directions. By contrast, among those who attend Mass less often, 54% say
the next pope should move in new directions while 42% prefer to maintain the church’s
traditional positions.
Six-in-ten
Catholics who are college graduates say the next pope should move the church in
new directions, compared with 38% who say the pope should maintain the church’s
traditional positions. This balance of opinion is reversed among Catholics with
some college or less education, among whom 56% want the church to maintain its
traditional positions and 41% would like it to move in new directions.
There
is little evidence of a generation gap on this question. Among Catholics under
age 50 and those ages 50 and older, opinion is closely divided as to whether
the new pope should move in new directions or maintain the church’s traditional
positions.
Catholics
who say the next pope should move the church in new directions were asked to
describe, in their own words, in what new directions they would like to see the
church go. (Since
some respondents gave more than one answer, the percentages in the table below
cannot simply be added together.)
About
one-in-five Catholics who think the next pope should move the church in new
directions say simply that the church should become more modern (19%). And 15%
want the next pope to do more to end sex abuse in the church and punish the
priests involved.
In
addition, roughly one-in-five mention issues regarding the priesthood,
including 14% who say priests should be allowed to marry and 9% who say women
should be allowed to serve in the priesthood.
Others
mention a desire to see the church become more accepting and open in general
(14%), and 9% say they want to see the church become more
accepting of homosexuality and gay marriage in particular. Of Catholics who
want a pope who will move the church in new directions, 7% specifically mention
birth control, mainly indicating a desire for a lessening of the church’s
opposition to the use of contraception.
In
response to a closed-ended question, nearly six-in-ten Catholics (58%) say it
would be good if the next pope allows priests to get married, while 35% say
this would be bad. Support for allowing priests to marry is much more common
among Catholics who attend Mass less than once a week (66%) than among those
who attend Mass regularly (46%).
Six-in-ten
Catholic women (61%) say allowing priests to marry would be a good thing — about
twice as many as say it would be a bad thing (30%). Men are more inclined than
women to say that allowing priests to marry would be a bad thing (41% vs. 30%).
College
graduates express more support than those Catholics with less education for
allowing priests to marry (71% vs. 53%). There is little generational
difference on this issue.
A
majority of Catholics (60%) say it would be a good thing if the next pope is
from a developing region of the world, like South America, Asia or Africa. Only
14% say this would be a bad thing, while one-in-five say it would not matter
either way (20%).
Catholics
who attend Mass at least once a week and those who attend less often express
similar views on this issue. The view that it would be a good thing if the next
pope is from a developing region is more common among college graduates (71%)
than among those Catholics with less education (56%).
Views of Pope
Benedict
Currently,
about three-quarters of U.S. Catholics express either a very favorable (32%) or
mostly favorable (41%) opinion of Benedict; roughly one-in-six U.S. Catholics
(16%) express an unfavorable opinion. Catholics who attend Mass at least once a
week are far more likely to express a favorable opinion of Benedict than those
who attend less often (87% vs. 64%).
Benedict’s
favorability rating among U.S. Catholics has declined since April 2008, when it
reached 83% immediately following the papal visit to the United States. The
percentage of U.S. Catholics expressing a favorable opinion of Benedict has now
settled back to levels seen in March 2008, prior to his visit. By contrast, in
Pew Research polling conducted between 1987 and 1996, John Paul II was
consistently rated favorably by upwards of nine-in-ten U.S. Catholics.
Of
U.S. Catholics who have followed the news of the pope’s resignation, 55% say
that Benedict has done a good or excellent job in promoting relations with
other religions. Like the pontiff’s overall favorability rating, this number
has declined in the past five years; it is down 15 points since the pope’s
visit to the United States in 2008. Currently, 37% of U.S. Catholics give the
pope poor or “only fair” marks for his handling of interfaith relations.
Most
Catholics who have followed news of the pope’s resignation (63%) rate
Benedict’s handling of the sex abuse scandal as “only fair” or poor; one-third
say he has done an excellent or good job addressing the scandal. Current
evaluations of the pope’s handling of the scandal are comparable to those seen
in 2010 and are significantly more negative than in April 2008.
About the
Surveys
Most of the analysis in this report is based on telephone
interviews conducted Feb. 13-18, 2013, among a national sample of 1,504 adults, 18 years of age or older, living in all
50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia (752 respondents were interviewed on a landline telephone and 752
were interviewed on a cell phone, including 364 who had no landline telephone).
The survey was conducted by interviewers at Princeton Data Source under the
direction of Princeton Survey Research Associates International. A combination
of landline and cell phone random digit dial samples were used; both samples
were provided by Survey Sampling International. Interviews were conducted in
English and Spanish. Respondents in the landline sample were selected by
randomly asking for the youngest adult male or female who is now at home.
Interviews in the cell sample were conducted with the person who answered the phone,
if that person was an adult 18 years of age or older. For detailed information
about the survey methodology, see http://people-press.org/methodology/
The combined landline and cell phone sample are weighted using an
iterative technique that matches gender, age, education, race, Hispanic origin
and nativity and region to parameters from the 2011 Census Bureau's American
Community Survey and population density to parameters from the Decennial
Census. The sample also is weighted to match current patterns of telephone
status and relative usage of landline and cell phones (for those with both),
based on extrapolations from the 2012 National Health Interview Survey. The
weighting procedure also accounts for the fact that respondents with both
landline and cell phones have a greater probability of being included in the
combined sample and adjusts for household size among respondents with a
landline phone. Sampling errors and statistical tests of significance take into
account the effect of weighting. The following table shows the unweighted
sample sizes and the error attributable to sampling that would be expected at
the 95% level of confidence for different groups in the survey:
Sample sizes and sampling errors for other subgroups are available
upon request.
In addition to sampling error, one should bear in mind that
question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce
error or bias into the findings of opinion polls.
Some of the analysis in this report is based on telephone
interviews conducted Feb. 14-17, 2013, among a national sample of 1,003 adults 18 years of age or older living in the
continental United States (502 respondents
were interviewed on a landline telephone and 501 were interviewed on a cell phone, including
276 who had no landline telephone).
The survey was conducted by interviewers at Universal Survey Center under the
direction of Princeton Survey Research Associates International. A combination of
landline and cell phone random digit dial samples were used; both samples were
provided by Survey Sampling International. Interviews were conducted in
English. Respondents in the landline sample were selected by randomly asking
for the youngest adult male or female who is now at home. Interviews in the
cell sample were conducted with the person who answered the phone, if that
person was an adult 18 years of age or older.
The combined landline and cell phone sample are weighted using an iterative
technique that matches gender, age, education, race, Hispanic origin and region
to parameters from the 2011 Census Bureau’s American Community Survey and
population density to parameters from the Decennial Census. The sample also is
weighted to match current patterns of telephone status, based on extrapolations
from the 2012 National Health Interview Survey. The weighting procedure also
accounts for the fact that respondents with both landline and cell phones have
a greater probability of being included in the combined sample and adjusts for
household size among respondents with a landline phone. Sampling errors and
statistical tests of significance take into account the effect of weighting.
The following table shows the unweighted sample sizes and the error
attributable to sampling that would be expected at the 95% level of confidence
for different groups in the survey:
Sample sizes and sampling errors for other subgroups are available
upon request.
In addition to sampling error, one should bear in mind that
question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce
error or bias into the findings of opinion polls.
Photo Credit: Luigi Vaccarella/Grand Tour/Corbis