Report
CARA Report: Marriage in the Catholic Church: A Survey of U.S. Catholics (2007)
CARA Report: Marriage in the Catholic Church: A Survey of U.S. Catholics by Mark M. Gray, Ph.D., Paul M. Perl, Ph.D., and Tricia C. Bruce, Ph.D., October 2007
In April 2007 the Committee on Marriage and Family Life of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) commissioned the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University to conduct a survey of U.S. adult Catholics on several issues regarding the sacrament of marriage. Survey topics included: (1) awareness of and understanding of Catholic Church teaching on marriage, (2) general attitudes about marriage, and (3) personal experiences of marriage preparation, the sacrament of marriage, and daily married life. The survey was designed to assist the Committee’s implementation of the National Pastoral Initiative for Marriage. The results will assist the Committee in shaping messages for the Initiative. It will identify the best ways to reach Catholics, and identify potential knowledge gaps within the Catholic population regarding understandings of marriage in the Church as well as important sub-group differences within the Catholic population regarding different aspects of marriage. In June 2007 CARA completed the survey with 1,008 self-identified adult Catholics via Knowledge Networks, a leading Internet polling firm. A survey with this number of respondents has a margin of sampling error of ±3.1 percentage points. As a rule of thumb, every 1 percentage point of the adult Catholic population is approximately equivalent to 500,000 persons.
Throughout the report there are consistent differences noted in the responses to the survey made by sub-groups of respondents. The three most important of these subgroups are defined by generation, Mass attendance, and gender.
Various social scientific studies of contemporary Catholics have revealed important differences among generations. Older Catholics, especially those who came of age prior to Vatican II, are typically more involved in Church life and more frequently attend Mass than younger generations of Catholics. In general, they tend to score higher on most survey items that measure “commitment” to Catholicism. Knowledge about the Catholic faith also varies by generation and is frequently greatest among older Catholics. However, this depends on the topic. For example, knowledge of theology and Church rules is usually higher among older Catholics, but knowledge of the Bible may be greatest among younger generations. Agreement with Church teachings is, again, often relatively high among the oldest Catholics, the Pre-Vatican II Generation (born before 1943). To a lesser extent this is also true of the Millennial Generation, Catholics (born after 1981) currently in their mid-twenties and younger. Agreement with Church teaching is sometimes lowest among the generation of Catholics who came of age during the changes associated with Vatican II (born between 1943 and 1960) and among Post-Vatican II Generation Catholics (born 1961 to 1981) though this too depends on the teaching in question.