Latin American Catholics favor birth control, married and women priests, and Pope Francis

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A new survey indicates that many Catholics in Latin America and the U.S. favor allowing women to become priests, with a number also supporting marriage for priests, birth control, same-sex marriage recognition and holy Communion for unmarried couples living together.

In addition, approval of Pope Francis remains high, and he is seen as a source of major change in the church, although his favorability ratings have fallen over the past decade of his papacy.

The findings were released Sept. 26 by Pew Research as part of its Spring 2024 Global Attitudes Survey, an initiative of the Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures project, which assesses religious change and its social impact worldwide.

For six Latin American countries -- Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru -- Pew polled a combined total of 3,655 Catholics, conducting face-to-face interviews in Spanish and, in the case of Brazil, Portuguese.

Pew also surveyed 2,021 Catholics in the U.S. in English and Spanish through self-administered online surveys. Participants without home internet access were provided with an internet-connected tablet.

All of the countries selected by Pew for the study have Catholic populations ranking in the top quarter of Catholics worldwide, with Brazil, Mexico and the U.S. first, second and fourth respectively, according to the Vatican's 2021 Statistical Yearbook of the Church. The six Latin American nations polled are home to about 75% of that region's Catholics.

The data helps provide dimension in understanding Latin American Catholics of various nations, Pew senior researcher Jonathan Evans told OSV News.

Among the six countries studied, "there are things where there's a lot of potential agreement," but "it is not that there is a monolith of opinion on all of these topics," said Evans. "There are differences."

Evans told OSV News he found it "very interesting" that "most Catholics surveyed ... say that Pope Francis does represent a change in the church's direction. And among those who say that Pope Francis is a change, the more likely answer is that this is a major change, rather than a minor change."

Colombian Catholics gave Pope Francis the highest rating, with 88% describing their view of him as somewhat (34%) or very (54%) favorable. Catholics in Brazil (84%), Mexico (80%) and Peru (78%) also indicated high levels of approval, with those in the U.S. (75%) and the pope's native Argentina (74%) close behind.

The lowest ranking was in Chile (64%), where -- although not cited in the Pew report -- clerical abuse scandals in recent years have corresponded with a marked decline in confidence in the Catholic Church.

Pope Francis' ratings in all six Latin American countries and the U.S. have declined over the past 10 years, especially in Argentina, down from 98% at the start of his papacy to 74% at present.

Still, Evans cautioned that the across-the-board downturn "is not a decline into negative, overarching views. ... For sure among Catholics, there is an overall favorable opinion of the pope."

The Pew data also indicates significant gaps in support for church teaching on several issues, although Catholics who prayed daily were less likely to disagree with the church's position, as were older Catholics in general.

In contrast, younger Catholics across Latin America were more likely to say the church should take steps to change its teaching, with 65% of Colombian Catholics between the ages of 18 and 39 backing women's ordination, compared to 49% of Catholics ages 40 and older.

Asked if they thought the Catholic Church should or should not allow women to become priests, 83% of Catholics in Brazil said yes, followed by 71% in the pope's native Argentina. Catholics in Chile (69%), Peru (65%) and the U.S. (64%) also largely endorsed the idea, with those in Colombia (56%) and Mexico (47%) slightly over or under the halfway mark.

Those numbers have risen among Latin American Catholics since Pew posed the same question a decade ago, although responses from Catholics in the U.S. have remained at about the same levels, the report said.

Catholic teaching affirms that priestly ordination is reserved to men alone, according to the universal tradition of the church, which "has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women," as St. John Paul II declared in his 1994 apostolic letter "Ordinatio Sacerdotalis." The pope added that "this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful."

Pope Francis, who has prioritized greater inclusion of women in the life of the church, has vigorously reiterated church teaching on priestly ordination, explaining in a 2022 interview that it flows from the Petrine dimension of the church, which recalls Christ's conferring authority on Peter over the Apostles, and which expresses the church's ministerial dimension.

In contrast, said Pope Francis, the Marian principle -- which reflects the example of Mary -- expresses the mysticism and spirituality of the church, and its feminine nature as the spouse of Christ. "The dignity of women is mirrored in this way," said the pope in the 2022 interview.

Survey questions for three issues -- birth control, married priests and the reception of holy Communion by unmarried couples living together -- relied on "simple, common phrases" and "involved a trade-off between broad understandability and theological nuance," Pew researchers admitted, providing a detailed explanation in their report that included a brief summary of Catholic teaching on the issues.

"One of the things we have to balance is both getting things as close as possible to the theological nuance that is present ... but also making the survey questions as comprehensible and understandable to the respondent as possible," Evans said, noting that Pew consults theological experts in the process. "There are situations where we can end up with a question that is really complex, and people hear it and say, 'I don't know what you're talking about.'"

Asked if they thought the Catholic Church should or should not allow Catholics to use birth control, most participants in all seven countries responded favorably for all seven countries, with Argentina (86%) topping the list, followed by the U.S. (83%), Chile (80%), Colombia (76%), Peru (75%), Mexico (69%) and Brazil (63%).

Although the church forbids the use of artificial contraception and abortion, the question did not explicitly account for the church's approval of natural family planning by married couples. Such fertility awareness-based methods, which rely on a number of biological markers, enable a husband and wife to leverage a woman's fertility cycle in order to space the births of their children for "well-grounded reasons" -- among them, physical, psychological and external conditions, as St. Paul VI declared in his 1968 encyclical, "Humanae Vitae."

The survey's question on priests and marriage also weighed theological precision and methodological best practices. Pew researchers asked participants if the church "should or should not allow priests to get married," with the U.S. (69%), Chile (65%) and Argentina (64%) showing favorable majorities; Colombia (52%) and Brazil (50%) about evenly divided; and Mexico (38%) and Peru (32%) largely disapproving.

However, Pew's phrasing conflates two different issues: the ordination of married men to the priesthood, and allowing ordained priests to marry.

In the Latin Church -- the largest of the 24 self-governing churches that make up the global Catholic Church, which is also headed by the Pope as the Bishop of Rome -- the ordination of celibate men to priesthood is the norm, with an exception made on a case-by-case basis for ordaining married men who were formerly clergy from Anglican or certain Protestant churches. Under this exception, the Latin Church has ordained a few hundred married priests throughout the world, with about 125 in the U.S. As a result, most Catholics have only an experience of celibate priests, although the Latin Church's centuries-old discipline could theoretically change to align with the Eastern Catholic and Orthodox discipline.

The 23 other Eastern Catholic churches, just like the Orthodox churches, have historic traditions of ordaining both married men and celibate men to the priesthood, although their bishops and monks always remain celibate.

However, all Catholic and Orthodox churches forbid priests from attempting to marry after ordination -- a potentially fraught situation involving lopsided power dynamics between priests and laity that raises questions about the potential for full and free consent needed to effect a sacramental marriage.

The survey question about holy Communion for cohabiting unmarried couples asked if the church "should or should not allow Catholics to take communion even if they are unmarried and living with a romantic partner." Respondents from Argentina (77%), the U.S. (75%) and Chile (73%) said yes, while those in Brazil (59%), Peru (56%), Colombia (52%) and Mexico (45%) expressed lower levels of support.

"Actually, Catholicism has no rule against unmarried people living together," the report noted, citing the church's teaching that sexual activity outside of marriage is a grave sin, and that those conscious of grave sin should not receive holy Communion until they have obtained absolution through the sacrament of reconciliation.

Although not cited by Pew, cohabitation by unmarried couples can also be regarded by church teaching as an occasion of scandal, which in turn can be a grave offense if it leads another to sin.

Peruvian Catholics (32%) surveyed by Pew were the least likely to endorse the church recognizing the marriages of same-sex couples, while a majority of Catholics in Argentina (70%) and Chile (64%) backed the idea. Just over half of U.S. Catholics (54%) agreed, with still fewer Catholics in Mexico (46%), Brazil (43%) and Colombia (40%) in favor.

Catholic teaching, as formulated by the Catechism of the Catholic Church, holds that the marriage covenant is reserved for a man and a woman. Through the sacrament of matrimony, it states, they become "a permanent union of persons capable of knowing and loving each other and God," with their love becoming "an image of the absolute and unfailing love with which God loves man" and ordered to "the good of the spouses" and the gift of children.

Gina Christian is the National Reporter for OSV News.

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