Canada May 09, 2024
‘The world is colonizing us’: Catholics’ beliefs have little in common with Church teachings in Canada and the U.S.
By Cardus Canada
Canadian Christians’ beliefs don’t necessarily match what their churches teach. That’s one of the key findings in a major new study by Cardus, Still Christian(?): What Canadian Christians Actually Believe. The survey of Canadian Christians found some significant inconsistencies between personal beliefs and historic church teachings:
- When asked whether “There is one true God in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” 89 per cent of Evangelicals agreed, 51 per cent of Catholics agreed, and 57 per cent of mainline Protestants agreed.
- Belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ as a historical event is held by 81 per cent of Evangelicals, 48 per cent of Catholics, and 55 per cent of mainline Protestants.
- Belief that Jesus Christ was not God ranges from 26 per cent of Evangelicals, to 54 per cent of Catholics, to 58 per cent of mainline Protestants.
- When asked whether all religions are equally true, 20 per cent of Evangelicals agreed, compared to 54 per cent of Catholics and 57 per cent of mainline Protestants.
- 65 per cent of Evangelicals disagreed that “Christian moral teachings should evolve with changes in society’s attitudes,” whereas 72 per cent of Catholics and 61 per cent of mainline Protestants agreed.
Interpreting the Survey Results
“You could say there’s a real problem in the pews,” says Rev. Dr. Bennett, Cardus Faith Communities Program Director. “While Evangelicals largely mirror their denomination’s doctrines, there still some level of incoherence there. Catholics often diverge, presenting both a challenge and an opportunity for the Church to reconcile its members with its teachings. Meanwhile, the diverse landscape of Mainline Protestant beliefs is complicated, but hints at deep fractures within those denominations.”
Still Christian(?) also found that younger Canadian Christians display a stronger commitment to the teachings and practices of their faith compared to older generations.
“In an era where Christianity is no longer a given in society, young Christians may be making deliberate, counter-cultural choices to adhere to the beliefs and devotional life of historical Christianity,” says Rev. Dr. Bennett.
Background to the Survey of Canadian Christians
Cardus conducted a survey of Canadian Christians in partnership with the Angus Reid Institute and with support from the Canadian Bible Society in February 2024. This allowed Rev. Dr. Andrew Bennett to compare and contrast respondents’ beliefs with teachings that have historically been affirmed within Christianity and that continue to be officially endorsed by some Christian churches.
Still Christian(?): What Canadian Christians Actually Believe is available online.
To see previous Cardus surveys with Angus Reid, visit Cardus.ca. Cardus has also worked with the Canadian Bible Society to study Canadian Christians’ engagement with and knowledge of Scripture.
Following are some comments from the Cardus Problem in the Pews announcement on May 7 on X/Twitter:
- Andrew Bennett: “Speaking as someone from the Catholic tradition, we as Catholics sometimes like to think that, well, you know, we’re a little bit better in terms of our beliefs than the Protestants. This will expose that as being a myth. People that tick the box as Roman Catholics look very much like mainline Protestants.”
- Regarding the Eucharist or Lord’s Supper or Holy Communion: “Amongst religiously committed Christians, just over 80 per cent believe that it only symbolizes the body and blood of Christ – which would be what many different Protestants and evangelical traditions hold . . . but then we also have significant numbers of Roman Catholics holding to this view. In fact, close to 70 per cent of Roman Catholics agree with this statement, which effectively denies the Real Presence in the Eucharist, which is a core teaching, not only in the Catholic Church, but certain of the Orthodox churches.
- Kevin Flatt said the patterns exemplified by the three main bodies of Christians – Catholic, Mainline and Evangelical – “have been pretty consistent for several decades [since the 1960s]. . . . I’m a bit surprised at the kind of robustness in the Evangelical subset, the robustness of continuing commitment to certain orthodox Christian teachings . . .”
- Rick Hiemstra: “If you’re not in a church, if you don’t have first-hand knowledge of what Christians do behind those doors on a Sunday, where are you getting your data on Christianity? You’re either getting it from social media or on Netflix, where the Christians are always deviants. They’re the ones that kill people or are sexually perverse in some kind of way. So if we talk about a brand, then I think our brand is being created in other places and other spaces other than the church.”
- Cardinal Thomas Collins: “In trying to kind of dialogue with the world – in the way we try to dialogue with the world – the world is colonizing us. . . . We need to know who we are.”
Meanwhile, Ryan Burge, a leading researcher on religion and politics, recently compiled data indicating that “cafeteria Catholicism” is rampant in the United States. Specifically, the country’s Catholics express widespread disagreement with the Church’s teaching on abortion, euthanasia, and the death penalty.
The term “cafeteria Catholic” refers to a Catholic who picks and chooses which Church teachings he or she affirms and adheres to. Washington, D.C., Cardinal Wilton Gregory recently used the term to describe President Joe Biden, who as president has advocated for unrestricted abortion through all nine months of pregnancy.
Burge found that only 0.9 per cent of Catholics agree with Church teaching on all three of the issues. His conclusions were based on 2022 data collected by the Global Social Survey (GSS) and compiled by the Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA). Burge told CNA that the 0.9 per cent number is an all-time low since GSS started collecting data in 1972.
“It’s not just many Catholics who disagree with the teachings of the Church — in fact, if you look at the data, it’s nearly all of them,” said Burge, who teaches political science at Eastern Illinois University.
This coincides with an overall 12 per cent decline in Church attendance among Catholics over the last two decades, as found by Gallup.
Abortion
Despite the Catholic Church’s clear teaching that abortion is gravely immoral, Burge said, there is “clear majority support for elective abortion in almost every circumstance.”
Over 50 per cent of Catholics support abortion when the mother’s health is at risk, the child is the result of rape, if there is a “strong chance of serious defect in the baby,” and when the family or mother either does not want or cannot support another child.
Nearly 90 per cent of Catholics support abortion in such cases in which the mother’s health is at risk. Over 80 per cent of Catholics support abortion in cases of rape, and close to 80 per cent of Catholics support abortion for serious defects.
ARDA also reports that 17.7 per cent of Catholics believe abortion should be illegal in all cases.
Euthanasia
Regarding euthanasia, which the Church teaches is morally unacceptable, and suicide, which the Catechism of the Catholic Church calls “contrary to love for the living God,” most Catholics again are not in agreement with the Church’s teaching.
According to the data, 70 per cent of Catholics support euthanasia, defined in the survey as a person’s ability to commit suicide in the case of an incurable disease. As pointed out by Burge, Catholics’ support for euthanasia and assisted suicide has been growing since the 1980s.
Death penalty
In recent decades, the Church has been increasingly voicing its opposition to the death penalty. In 2018, the Catechism of the Catholic Church was revised to reflect that opposition.
The Catechism acknowledges that in the past “recourse to the death penalty on the part of legitimate authority, following a fair trial, was long considered an appropriate response to the gravity of certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme, means of safeguarding the common good.”
“Today, however, there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes. In addition, a new understanding has emerged of the significance of penal sanctions imposed by the state. Lastly, more effective systems of detention have been developed, which ensure the due protection of citizens but, at the same time, do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption,” the Catechism indicates.
The Catechism goes on to quote Pope Francis in stating that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.”
Despite this, ARDA found that 61 per cent of Catholics are in favor of the death penalty for convicted murderers. Support for the death penalty among Catholics has waned in recent decades after reaching a high of 81 per cent in 1990.
‘A lot of work to do’
Monsignor Charles Pope, a Catholic author and pastor of Holy Comforter-Saint Cyprian Church in the Archdiocese of Washington, told CNA that the 0.9 per cent number does not accurately represent Catholics’ “buy-in” to the faith.
Msgr. Pope called the study “very unfair” and said it is “bringing things together which need to be analyzed separately.” He pointed out that the Church is clear in its teaching that abortion is intrinsically evil, while there is more leeway when it comes to the death penalty, which he described as a “prudential” rather than a “doctrinal” matter.
He agreed, however, that there is still a disconnect between Church teaching and what many Catholics believe. This, he thinks, is due to what he called “the politicization of moral issues.”
“Politics, sadly, is driving the conversation more than faith, because we are very worldly in our outlook,” he said. “So, if there’s one positive thing to take from this study it’s that we certainly have a lot of work to do to convince our own faithful of our teachings.”
“We’ve got a lot of work to do, but it doesn’t mean our teachings are wrong,” he went on. “It’s not the job of the Church to reflect the public opinion polls of our people, it’s the job of the Church to say: ‘Here’s what Jesus says.’”
With files from Catholic News Agency