(OSV News) — A new study of U.S. Catholics suggests that Mass attendance and political affiliation are associated with their views of Pope Francis and Catholic teaching on key moral issues.
The findings were released by the Pew Research Center April 12 from a study that surveyed close to 12,700 respondents, 2,019 of whom self-identified as Catholic.
The sample was designed to be representative of the nation’s self-identified Catholics, who constitute 20% of the U.S. population, about 52 million U.S. Catholic adults out of the nation’s 262 million adults counted by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2023.
Most (57%) of the nation’s Catholics are white, while 33% are Hispanic, followed by Asian (4%), Black (2%) and Catholics of other races (3%). Racial and ethnic distribution of Catholics varies in the U.S., with greater numbers of U.S. Hispanic Catholics living in the South and West, where they respectively represent 40% and 55% of the Catholic population in those regions.
A new study of U.S. Catholics
A majority of U.S. Catholics (58%) are age 50 and above, as compared to 48% of all U.S. adults in Pew’s survey.
Hispanic Catholics tend to be significantly younger than white Catholics, with 57% of Hispanic Catholics under 50 as compared to 32% of white Catholics.
Regionally, 29% of U.S. Catholics live in the nation’s South; 26% in the Northeast; 24% in the West; and 21% in the Midwest.
Pew found that nearly three in 10 (28%) of U.S. Catholics reported attending Mass weekly or more often, similar to results reported by a recent Gallup poll in which 21% of U.S. Catholics said they attend weekly and 9% almost every week.
Daily prayer was reported by 52% of U.S. Catholics, while 46% described religion as “very important” in their lives. According to Pew, 20% of U.S. Catholics reported weekly Mass attendance, daily prayer and a regard for religion as “very important” in their life.
Politically, a majority of Catholic registered voters (52%) identify with or lean toward the Republican Party, and 44% with the Democratic Party.
Views on Pope Francis
The data showed that 75% of U.S. Catholics regarded the pope favorably, which is down from 83% in 2021, and 90% in early 2015.
The report said that 89% of U.S. Catholics who are or lean Democrat approve of the pope, while just 7% disapprove of him. In contrast, just 63% of U.S. Catholics who are or lean Republican give the pope a thumbs-up, while 35% view him unfavorably. Those unfavorable views among Catholics who are or lean Republican are higher than 2018, the year a new wave of sex abuse scandals, including abuse accusations involving former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, broke out.
“The partisan gap in views of Pope Francis is now as large as it’s ever been in our surveys,” said the report.
Political divide and moral stances
Despite the church’s teaching against abortion, some six in 10 U.S. Catholics support legalized abortion in all or most cases, with Hispanic Catholics (63%) slightly more approving of keeping abortion legal in all or most cases than white Catholics (59%).
Those opinions about abortion “tend to align” with U.S. Catholics’ political preferences, noted Pew, with 78% of Catholics who are or lean Democrat favoring legalized abortion in most or all cases less than 84% of U.S. adults who are or lean Democrat; and 43% of Catholics who are or lean Republican slightly favoring abortion compared to 40% of U.S. adults who are or lean Republican.
The survey also assessed U.S. Catholics’ views on contraception, sexuality and the priesthood, and found “big differences between Mass-attending Catholics and those who don’t (attend)” on those issues.
Impact of Mass attendance
“Catholics who attend Mass regularly (once a week or more) are far more inclined than those who go less often to say the church should take a traditional or conservative approach on questions about the priesthood and sexuality,” said the report.
Most weekly Mass attendees said the church should not recognize same-sex marriages (65%) or allow women to be ordained as priests (56%).
A majority of U.S. Catholics (69%) across the political divide — including 53% of weekly Mass attending Catholics — said the church should “allow priests to get married.”
The Pew survey question on this point, however, does not accurately distinguish between the normative practice in the Eastern Catholic and Orthodox churches of ordaining married men to the priesthood on the one hand, and the churches’ ancient prohibition on priests attempting marriage after ordination.
Although the Latin Church, which most Catholics belong to, only ordains celibate men with few exceptions, and could legitimately change its discipline on the ordination of married men to align with the Eastern Catholic or Orthodox churches — none of these churches allows priests to marry unless they are returned first to the lay state, rendering them no longer in a position of spiritual power over a lay woman whose full and free consent is necessary for sacramental marriage.
U.S. Catholics who do not attend Mass on a weekly basis favored recognition of same-sex marriages (61%) and women’s ordination (71%).
Broadly, 83% of U.S. Catholics surveyed said the church should permit the use of contraception, 75% said the church should permit reception of holy Communion by unmarried couples living together and 54% said the church should recognize same-sex marriage.
Among Catholics who opposed deviating from church teaching on contraception, priestly celibacy, women’s ordination, holy Communion for unmarried cohabiting couples and recognition of same-sex marriages, 59% said they attend Mass at least once a week, and 72% identify with or lean toward the Republican Party.
For those Catholics who said the church should permit the above practices, 56% reported seldom or never attending Mass, and 57% identified with or leaned toward the Democratic Party.
Research insights
Pew research associate Patricia Tevington told OSV News the report, for which she was one of three primary researchers, is intended to serve as “a descriptive source of information,” rather than a causal analysis of the nation’s Catholics and their characteristics.
“We try to just tell you what’s going on,” said Teverington. “If we can rule out explanations that might be obvious, we try to do so, but generally we just … give you the facts.”
The data has been released publicly and can be downloaded from Pew’s website, she said, so that other researchers “are able to run deeper analyses … and make more causal arguments” about the results.
Still, Teverington said that the effects of political divides and weekly Mass attendance can be detected in the data.
“Political partisanship has definitely been … increasing over time,” she said. “And people (who) attend Mass weekly or more are definitely different than folks that attend less often.”
