He's a rock star.
Originally posted at Wonky News Nerd.
A national survey of American Catholics finds, among other things, that most are in favor of contraception and really, really like the current pope.
Among the U.S. Catholics surveyed by Saint Leo University Polling Institute:
- Sixty-eight percent favor allowing divorced or remarried Catholics to receive the sacrament of Communion, even if their previous marriages have not been annulled. Only 18 percent do not.
- Sixty-six percent of Catholics say the Church should drop its opposition to contraception while only 21 percent do not.
- A smaller majority of U.S. Catholics (50 to 33 percent) supports dropping opposition to pre-marital sex and cohabitation.
- A narrow plurality (42 to 40 percent) says the Church should recognize same-sex marriages.
- Pope Francis has approval numbers that Washington politicians can only dream about. Among the U.S. Catholics polled, 85 percent gave him a favorable rating.
In a statement, Michael Anthony Novak, assistant professor of theology and religion at Saint Leo University, said: "Catholics take marriage, the family, and the sacraments seriously. But these results seem to verify that there is a frustration with the Church's pastoral policies regarding divorce and remarriage."
The poll results were released Oct. 9, as Catholic bishops from around the world meet in Rome for a special synod, or conference, on family and marriage.
According to David Willey of BBC News, the synod, which began Oct. 5, is “a two-week brainstorming session” on how the bishops can “better present their teachings on marriage, family life, and sexuality to their flock.”
The conference agenda was drawn up after an unprecedented opinion survey of the faithful, ordered by Pope Francis last year, to find out why Rome's teachings are increasingly being rejected or ignored.
A ban on artificial contraception decreed by Pope Paul VI in his Humanae Vitae encyclical in 1968 has been routinely disregarded by Catholic couples for years.
And while the Church continues to insist on the indissolubility of Christian marriage, which it considers a sacramental union of a man and a woman, not merely a civil matter; many countries, even strongly Roman Catholic ones, have legalized abortion, divorce and same-sex marriages.
The Philippines, which has Asia's largest Roman Catholic population, has recently passed a birth control law allowing the government to distribute free contraceptives, which could be the prelude to legalizing divorce too.
The video below, issued by the Vatican, explains the basics of the current synod, from the church's point of view: