WASHINGTON (OSV News) -- As the Catholic Church and its cardinals prepare for May's conclave, a new study by the Pew Research Center shows that U.S. Catholics want a more inclusive church -- but divides remain on key issues among those with differing rates of Mass attendance.
The survey found that 60% of U.S. Catholics said the church "should be more inclusive, even if that means changing some of its teachings," while 37% said the church "should stick to its traditional teachings, even if that means the church gets smaller."
But among those who attend Mass weekly, 53% said the church should prioritize its traditional teachings, while 42% said it should prioritize inclusivity.
White non-Hispanic Catholics (61%) were more likely to prioritize inclusivity over keeping traditional teaching than Hispanic Catholics (56%). Hispanic Catholics showed stronger support for insisting the church stick to traditional teachings (40%) than white non-Hispanic Catholics (37%).
The survey did not include enough Black or Asian Catholics to break out separate responses.
According to the study, 84% of U.S. Catholics said the church should allow Catholics to use birth control -- it did not distinguish between natural and artificial methods -- while another 83% said the church should allow couples to use in vitro fertilization, or IVF. Those numbers slightly decreased to 72% (for birth control) and 71% (for IVF) among weekly Massgoers.
Father Thomas Gaunt, executive director of the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, told OSV News the Pew survey aligned with his organization's previous findings on the correlation between Mass attendance and acceptance of church teaching.
"Regular weekly church attenders tend to be far more consistent with the church's stance and teachings than those who aren't regular," said Father Gaunt, whose organization, along with other Catholic experts, was consulted by Pew regarding the questionnaire.
At the same time, Father Gaunt noted some of the questions -- specifically, those on IVF, married priests, and same-sex blessings -- could have been further refined for greater accuracy.
In particular, he said, the question regarding IVF -- which simply asked respondents if the church should permit the procedure to get pregnant -- did not include language about the embryos created in the process, said Father Gaunt.
He explained that this "yes" to an abstract question is really an "incomplete" response. He noted that if participants had to also consider the fate of the discarded embryonic children, "You'll see it's a different reaction: 'Hmm, I didn't realize (that).'"
IVF is contrary to Catholic teaching, as it involves the eugenic destruction of millions of embryonic children, the unraveling of the integral bond between childbearing and marital love, the erosion of a child's right to natural parents, and threats to health, safety and religious liberty. "Donum Vitae," the 1987 instruction on respect for human life issued by the Vatican's Congregation (now Dicastery) for the Doctrine of the Faith, first articulated the church's stance on IVF, stressing human embryos' dignity and their right to life.
The church holds that human sexuality, the differences and complementarity of male and female, is oriented toward the goods of marriage and the flourishing of family life. While married couples, amid their openness to new life, can space the birth of their children through natural family planning -- a term encompassing an array of fertility awareness-based methods used to achieve or delay pregnancy -- the church teaches that efforts to make procreation impossible are "intrinsically evil."
Additionally, Pew found that 68% of U.S. Catholics overall said the church should allow women to become deacons, while another 59% said the church should ordain women as priests.
But these numbers decreased to 54% (for women deacons) and 41% (for women priests) among weekly Massgoers.
The late Pope Francis, who prioritized a greater inclusion of women in the life of the church, vigorously reiterated church teaching on the priesthood, which holds that priestly ordination is reserved to men alone due to the decision of Jesus Christ to only choose men for his apostles, the first priests and bishops of the church. However, the late pope also called for more theological reflection on the feminine dimension of the church and the role of women.
At the October 2024 Synod on Synodality, then-Vatican doctrinal chief Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, citing Pope Francis, said that the question of women in the diaconate -- for which the pontiff had established a study group -- was not "mature." The cardinal explained that "other issues," particularly the broad issue of women's participation in the church, needed to be "deepened and resolved" first.
The Pew poll also found 63% of U.S. Catholics overall said the church should allow priests to get married, but just 49% of weekly Massgoers said they would support this.
Pew's phrasing around married priests, however, did not allow Catholic respondents to give their views on the ordination of married men to the priesthood. In an explainer on its wording, Pew researchers said they only addressed "allowing parish priests to get married and continue in their duties" -- something that is not allowed even in Eastern Catholic or Orthodox churches that have married priests.
In the Latin Church -- the largest of the Catholic Church's 24 self-governing churches and which is headed by the pope as the bishop of Rome -- the ordination of celibate men only to priesthood has been the norm since the 12th century, with some exceptions to the discipline made in modern times for some former Protestant married clergy. The possibility of the Latin Church ordaining married men to the priesthood, in addition to celibate men, as a norm to align with the ancient discipline of the other 23 Eastern Catholic churches and their Orthodox counterparts, is a debatable matter.
However, all Catholic and Orthodox churches forbid priests from attempting to marry after ordination. The potentially fraught situation involves lopsided power dynamics between priests, who act in the person of Christ the head, and lay women, raising difficulties about the possibility for full and free consent needed to effect a valid sacramental marriage.
Six in 10 U.S. Catholics said priests should be permitted to give same-sex couples blessings.
But Father Gaunt said the question did not highlight that "priests could always give blessings to individuals" -- something Pope Francis stressed after the Vatican's 2023 declaration on the issue, "Fiducia Supplicans," created a firestorm of controversy. The late pope said in a 2024 CBS News interview, "What I allowed was not to bless the union. That cannot be done because that is not the sacrament. I cannot. The Lord made it that way. But to bless each person, yes."
Other findings from the Pew survey:
-About three-quarters of U.S. Catholics (76%) say the church should allow Catholics to receive holy Communion even if they are unmarried and living with a romantic partner, whereas the church's Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches sexual activity must take place exclusively within marriage, otherwise it is a grave sin that "excludes one from sacramental communion."
-Half said the church should recognize the unions of same-sex couples as marriages, whereas the Catholic Church teaches matrimony is the sacramental lifelong union of a man and a woman for the good of the spouses and open to the gift of children.
The survey also found a stark partisan divide, with self-identified Republicans and independents who lean Republican more likely to express support for the traditional teachings on those issues than Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents.
Among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, 53% said the church should prioritize maintaining its traditional teachings, while 45% said it should prioritize inclusivity. However, 75% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents said the church should prioritize inclusivity, while 21% said to prioritize maintaining traditional teaching.
About three out of 10 U.S. Catholics say they attend Mass at least once a week, according to Pew, while the remainder attend less frequently or not at all.
