{"id":3802,"date":"2008-10-18T14:49:30","date_gmt":"2008-10-18T14:49:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=3802"},"modified":"2025-09-30T00:50:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T00:50:09","slug":"knights-of-columbus-poll-of-practicing-vs-non-practicing-catholics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=3802","title":{"rendered":"Knights of Columbus poll of “practicing” vs. “non-practicing” Catholics"},"content":{"rendered":"

Full disclosure – I've been a member of the K of C for almost 20 years.<\/p>\n

John Allen of NCR (National Catholic Reporter) has an interesting column on the just-released findings of a poll of Catholics and their positions on various issues, as well as political philosophy (conservative vs. moderate vs. liberal).<\/p>\n

The poll shows a clear differentiation between "practicing" and "non-practicing" Catholics – and the bar is set pretty low for the definition of "practicing". You are defined as a practicing Catholic if you go to Mass once or twice a month (Uhhh, what happened to Sunday Mass obligation?).<\/p>\n

Anyway, here is the article, with an excerpt below,but well worth reading in it's entirety:<\/p>\n

Synod: Poll finds practicing, non-practicing Catholics in America are worlds apart | National Catholic Reporter Conversation …<\/strong><\/font><\/a><\/p>\n

\n

The Marist College poll found that 65 percent of American Catholics are \u201cpracticing,\u201d defined as attending Mass at least once or twice a month, while the 35 percent who don\u2019t attend that often were defined as \u201cnon-practicing.\u201d<\/p>\n

In some ways, the most interesting results of the survey concern the differences between these two groups.<\/p>\n

For example, according to the survey, 59 percent of practicing Catholics describe themselves as \u201cpro-life,\u201d as opposed to 44 percent of the general American population, while 65 percent of non-practicing Catholics say they are \u201cpro-choice,\u201d as opposed to 50 percent of the general population. <\/p>\n

On same-sex marriage, 46 percent of non-practicing Catholics are in favor, as opposed to just 30 percent of all Americans, while 75 percent of practicing Catholics are opposed.<\/p>\n

\u201cPracticing Catholics hold traditional values at a rate equal to or higher than the American population at large, while non-practicing Catholics are less traditional,\u201d Anderson said, summarizing the results. <\/p>\n

\u201cCatholics who are no longer practicing hold positions far outside the mainstream of Catholicism, and have significant disagreements with the moral teaching of the church," he said.<\/p>\n

Anderson therefore called upon the media to distinguish between these two groups \u2013 practicing and non-practicing \u2013 rather than referring to Catholics as an \u201cundifferentiated block.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

There are links in the article to some of the raw data, and here is one of them: <\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.kofc.org\/un\/cmf\/resources\/Communications\/documents\/moralissues.pdf<\/strong><\/font><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Full disclosure – I've been a member of the K of C for almost 20 years. John Allen of NCR (National Catholic Reporter) has an interesting column on the just-released findings of a poll of Catholics and their positions on various issues, as well as political philosophy (conservative vs. moderate vs. liberal). The poll shows […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3802"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9220,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3802\/revisions\/9220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}