Australian bishop faults Papal leadership on clerical abuse

“College students from coast to coast are asking Pope Francis to reaffirm Church teaching at the Synod”, said John Ritchie, director of Tradition Family Property Student Action, referring to the upcoming Synod on the Family in October.

In contrast to the favored pontiff, relating to the institutional church, 25% of Catholics pile on the damaging phrases similar to “dogmatic” or “hypocritical” or “overly involved with cash”. Whereas 55 percent of Americans favor allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry legally, a full 60 percent of Catholics say the same. Yet many U.S. Catholics (38 percent) believe he supports it, according to the survey of 1,331 U.S. adults.

Meanwhile, Catholics mirror most Americans by sharing the pope’s fairly left-leaning approach to economics and immigration.

Bishop Robinson, a canon lawyer, said he thought popes had handled sex abuse poorly.

Think about the confusion over same-sex marriage. But not so when it comes to all Americans; only 56 percent view the Church favorably. Catholics (72 percent) and Americans writ large (71 percent) agree that the government should do more to help the poor eradicate income inequality, while 63 percent of the general U.S. population and 61 percent of Catholics say America should grant undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship under certain requirements. Fourteen percent remain unsure of the pope’s influence on the Church.

Most Catholics (57 percent) want the Church to focus its energy on social justice instead of contraception and abortion, the survey found, and that sentiment breaks along political lines. It was conducted in English and Spanish August 5-11.

Reactions to the pope also reflect the complexity of the church in the United States today. “Among Catholics, a slim majority (51%) says abortion should be legal in all or most cases, compared to 45% who say it should be illegal”. These are the 15% of People who say they grew up Catholic however advised PRRI they not determine with the religion.

The petition, addressed directly to Francis, notes that Catholics see “widespread confusion arising from the possibility that a breach has opened within the Church that would accept adultery – by permitting divorced and then civilly remarried Catholics to receive Holy Communion -and would virtually accept even homosexual unions when such practices are categorically condemned as being contrary to Divine and natural law”. That aligns with their bitter view of the institutional church: exclusively 43% maintain a constructive view.

In fact, typical Catholics are not only more left-leaning than the Church, but also more progressive than average Americans on most major issues – sometimes by significant margins. “They’ve heat emotions for him however they don’t seem to be going to go seek out a Buddhist meditation middle”.