Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
The Catholic Church seems to be having a difficult time getting their own followers to accept their vigorously held positions on abortion and stem cell research. A new Gallup poll shows that Catholics don't find abortion or embryonic stem cell research to be a moral problem any more than non-Catholics do. In fact, that's true on a whole range of issues where the Church takes a strong moral position and their followers don't buy in to that position any more than non-Catholics do. Here's a chart that shows the results of the new poll.
This does change considerably when you distinguish between those Catholics who attend church regularly and those Catholics who don't, so this obviously has much to do with how seriously a Catholic takes his own religion. But the survey also found that Catholics who attend church regularly are far more liberal on those issues than non-Catholics who attend church regularly. Another chart:
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The first thing that stands out is the second chart, both catholics and non-catholics who do not go to church regulary show a strong correlation in acceptabilty rates.
Posted by: Ramel | April 4, 2009 10:00 AM
This is why Benedict is so focused on Africa.
Posted by: Julian | April 4, 2009 10:09 AM
I'm not too surprised at the findings. What really does surprise me is that they apparently didn't survey at all on the question of using birth control, which would seem to be logical to include in such a survey.
Posted by: chezjake | April 4, 2009 10:09 AM
Chezjake: Birth control is a non-issue for most American Catholics today. They use it and don't worry about what the "Church" thinks. U.S. Catholic marriage preparation classes tell couples that it is a matter of conscience, not a specific sin. The vast majority of priests know that a couple is not going to have 8 kids, so they would rather they get married and at least have 2 or 3.
Posted by: Ann Klein | April 4, 2009 10:56 AM
This is no great surprise, at least to Catholics: the laity of the American Catholic church has not been very catholic, at least since the end of WWII. It began, I think, with birth control and the rise of Catholics into the middle class (and wanting to stay there). Once they got used to ignoring the clergy, the genii was out of the bottle.
Posted by: John Pieret | April 4, 2009 11:20 AM
I would like to see these results normalized for various social factors like, education, urban v. rural, geography, generations of living in USA. I suspect Catholics have biases in several of these categories and would move more conservative when compared to like groups.
This is like what happened when comparing charter schools to regular public schools. Overall the charter schools do better but if you factor in the social background of the students, public school do just as well, if not a little bit better.
Posted by: Ferrous Patella | April 4, 2009 12:14 PM
John Pieret:
You make a good point about how in the last 60 plus years Catholics have gotten accustomed to ignoring the clergy. What is interesting is that this gap between the clergy and the laity has been sustained for such a long time. This directly reflects a lack of democracy within the Catholic Church. In many (if not most) Protestant churches the laity has a direct say over the hiring of clergy. Thus within individual congregations more liberal laity will be matched up with liberal clergy and conversely conservative laity will be matched up with conservative clergy.
Posted by: Cheddar | April 4, 2009 12:22 PM
The disconnect is indeed mindboggling. There's a reason I refer the Fall River Diocese's newspaper as "my weekly dose of anticatholic propaganda".
Posted by: Brian X | April 4, 2009 2:04 PM
Regarding the death penalty, the church itself changed its position during the lifetime of many of its adherents. Before John XXIII, the church was quite supportive of the death penalty.
The change explains why practicing Catholics like our Supreme Court majority are quite willing to support death penalty law.
Churches evolve over time. 'Dogma' is often quite malleable.
Posted by: RickD | April 4, 2009 2:17 PM
It's interesting to see what is evidently being talked about in sermons in Catholic vs non catholic churches.
Abortion and homosexuality are clearly hot issues in non Catholic pulpits, but in Catholic churches, only abortion shows a full 50 % reduction in acceptance. The death penalty is also in lowest regard among Catholic regular churchgoers, so it seems that sanctity of life issues are being talked about with a bit less hypocrisy than in non Catholic circles.
Posted by: Gingerbaker | April 4, 2009 3:23 PM
Does this mean we can dispel the myth that the Pope speaks for the entirety of the world's Catholic population? I'm bookmarking this page.
Posted by: Brandon | April 4, 2009 3:55 PM
And this is why we should try to convince Catholics to leave that wretched institution.
Posted by: MarkusR | April 4, 2009 4:43 PM
We've had this argument before. Just because an institution does some awful things doesn't mean that one's emotional attachment to that institution isn't justified.
Posted by: Brandon | April 4, 2009 5:57 PM
Brandon, you're exactly right. Just because an abusive spouse has done some awful things doesn't mean that one's emotional attachment to that person isn't justified.
After all, I'm sure he/she didn't mean it, and they're usually ok, except for when they get drunk...
Posted by: Russell Miller | April 4, 2009 6:18 PM
Julian,
Spot on
Posted by: Hathor | April 4, 2009 6:27 PM
Would you like some fries with your a dicto simpliciter ad dictum secundum quid?
Posted by: Brandon | April 4, 2009 6:28 PM
It's much more simple than that. Politics trumps religion in most cases -- if you are a conservative, it pretty much doesn't matter whether you're a Catholic or not, you are likely to support the death penalty.
I sometimes listen to Relevant Radio, a conservative Catholic radio station and they adhere to and preach a conservative political agenda right down the line. The can't really advocate *for* the death penalty since that would be going against official Catholic doctrine, but they handle that by simply not talking about at all -- even as they spend hour and hour banging on about every other "pro-life" issue.
Posted by: tacitus | April 4, 2009 7:35 PM
I'm waiting for the day that Catholic clergy refuse Communion to politicians who support the death penalty. (read that with irony tags)
Part of Catholic doctrine is that That His Royal Popeness is the personal representative of Jesus H. Christ on Earth, and has been granted the right to speak infallibly on matters of faith and morals. I wish that all person who do not believe that, and therefore are not Catholic, would leave the church and diminish the illusion that the Pope speaks for a billion people.
Posted by: Herod the Freemason | April 4, 2009 7:43 PM
Oh, you spouted something at me in Latin, I guess I should cede the discussion right now...
It's pretty close to the same thing, particularly as there are very few organizations, secular or otherwise, that have caused more harm to society as a whole than the catholic church, and they use many of the sama approaches to keep their members, including emotional and sometimes even physical abuse.
Look forward to the next latin phrase... it certainly does make you look intelligent, doesn't it.
Posted by: Russell Miller | April 4, 2009 8:27 PM
so, non-catholics are less morally accepting, except for the death penalty. That...i would never have believed.
Posted by: Richard Eis | April 5, 2009 5:04 AM
Russell Miller:
You forgot the part about priests advising women to stay with abusive spouses, for the good of the children and the sanctity of marriage.
Posted by: democommie | April 5, 2009 7:39 AM
The article should say whether this is a poll of Catholics or U.S. Catholics. The Church is a worldwide institution.
The Catholic Church has two major, major blind spots: women and sex. I think it will be very interesting to see what the Vatican's position on issues like homosexuality, birth control and divorce once it (please God) works these things out.
Posted by: DRF | April 5, 2009 9:14 AM
Russell Miller: I'm not taking sides here between you and Brandon, but I will defend logic - you clearly committed a logical fallacy, despite Brandon's somewhat obfuscatory response (and yes, my adjective use was intentionally ironic). If I had to choose between poor reasoning articulated clearly or good reasoning that is perhaps a bit unclear (although I would hope that there are plenty of people around scienceblogs who could at least understand what "dicto simpliciter" means), I'd take the latter any day.
And for the record, I'd have just said "false analogy" and left it at that.
Posted by: The Christian Cynic | April 5, 2009 3:23 PM
Didn't they think to use their tried and true threat of eternal damnation to scare their followers into submission? Maybe that scarecrow of theirs, Hell, doesn't scare as many people anymore.
Posted by: Raymond Minton | April 5, 2009 4:00 PM
I didn't really intend it as a hard and fast analogy. But even so, as someone who came out of a cultish religion several steps to the right of catholicism, I'd argue that even if that were the case, it's not as false as you're asserting.
Interestingly enough, the Catholic Church teaches they are the bride of Christ... take from that what you will, but considering what they did to what are otherwise pretty good teachings it sure does border on domestic violence, doesn't it?
But anyway, whatever. My skills tend more towards the engineering and artistic side, which means I'm probably not going to be able to follow half of the arguments in latin or what-not anyway. Oddly enough, I'm OK with that.
Posted by: Russell Miller | April 5, 2009 6:47 PM
Brandon said:
"We've had this argument before. Just because an institution does some awful things doesn't mean that one's emotional attachment to that institution isn't justified."
to which, Russell Miller replied with his comment about abusive spouses.
I'd say that Brandon's full of it. The Cath-O-Lick church has, for centuries, abused the laity in numerous ways. Comparing them to an abusive spouse might be inapt, but to a an abusive, pedophiliac, spot on.
Posted by: democommie | April 5, 2009 7:58 PM
democommie... I'll buy that.
Posted by: Russell Miller | April 5, 2009 8:01 PM
I kind of assumed people would just look up the latin on Wikipedia. And then they'd see the article and learn something new about logic. I live to teach.
Posted by: Brandon | April 6, 2009 2:55 AM
Brandon:
"I kind of assumed..."
I think we sorta knew that. You kind of assumed that Russell Miller's comment was "a dicto simpliciter ad dictum secundum quid?".
I'm not a philosopher by training (although I have slept near some books on the subject) but it's not clear to me that Russell Miller committed a logical fallacy. As he stated himself the statement was analagous.
As for Christian Cynic's comment; I learned a long time ago that he, like heddle, will brook no criticism of christianity. I have to admit that I originally thought his blognomen meant that he was somehow cynical ABOUT christianity--boy was I mistaken!
Posted by: democommie | April 6, 2009 7:16 AM
I hope that nobody ever actually believed that the Pope represents most Catholics. It shouldn't take this poll to realize that.
I am a little surprised that the Catholic churchgoers are more tolerant of some things than non-churchgoers though, such as non-marital sex, divorce, and having a baby outside of marriage.
Posted by: catgirl | April 6, 2009 11:25 AM