Bishops' survey looks at U.S. Catholics' practices, views

No surprises here, folks...merely confirmation of observable data:

...nearly three-quarters of American Catholics say they are somewhat or very familiar with church teachings on marriage...

I have this bridge for sale...

Those were among the results of a nationwide survey commissioned in April 2007 by the U.S. bishops' Committee on Marriage and Family Life on U.S. Catholic attitudes and practices regarding marriage. The survey was carried out in June 2007 by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University via the Internet polling firm Knowledge Networks and was made public Feb. 11.

Lovely...

The report said marriage patterns among U.S. Catholics were similar to those for all Americans...

Among those currently married, nearly a third (30 percent) had not been married in the church or had their marriage "convalidated," or formally blessed by the church...

In other words, living in a state of grevious sin.

Asked for their views on the general acceptability of divorce, more than three-quarters of U.S. Catholics (76 percent) said it was "acceptable in some cases" and another 17 percent said it was "acceptable in all cases." Only 7 percent said divorce was "not acceptable in any case."

The followup question that does not appear in this article should ask whether remarriage is acceptable after divorce...

The survey report divided respondents into four generational groups:

the pre-Second Vatican Council generation, ages 65 and over in 2007, who made up 19 percent of the respondents;

the Vatican II generation, ages 47-64, 31 percent;

the post-Vatican II generation, ages 26-46, 40 percent;

and the millennial generation, ages 18-25, 10 percent.

And we have this gem:

"Agreement with church teachings is ... often relatively high among the oldest Catholics. ... To a lesser extent this is also true of the millennial generation," the report said. "Agreement with church teaching is sometimes lowest among the generation of Catholics who came of age during the changes associated with Vatican II and among post-Vatican II-generation Catholics."

Really??? Some of us know of this firsthand - and we didn't need a "study" to tell us this...

For the rest of the story, click here.