The Knights of Columbus and Marist College recently released the results of a survey of “American Millennials,” young adults age 18 to 29. Some of the findings include:
• 85% of Catholic Millennials (those 18-29) believe in God.
• 66% of Catholic Millennials say abortion is morally wrong, while 63% say the same of euthanasia.
• 82% of Catholic Millennials see morals as “relative.” The majority of practicing Catholics (54%) disagree.
A PDF of the results can be found here.
(Via: Reformation 21)
March 1st, 2010 | 9:28 am
When I click on the PDF link, it says that 76% of Catholic Millennials believe in God, not 85% (p. 7). Am I missing something?
March 1st, 2010 | 9:29 am
Ah, yes, I am missing something: p. 7 is about Americans in general; p. 8 compares them to Catholic millennials. Okay, I’ll go sulk somewhere else. ;-)
March 1st, 2010 | 10:07 am
44% of all American Catholics believe it is morally wrong to experiment on animals for medical research??????
By all means people, please live up to your “morals” by removing your pacemakers & stents, and if you are diabetic please throw out that insulin now. We wouldn’t want you to do anything “immoral.”
March 1st, 2010 | 10:36 am
Well, Rich is on to something when he points up the lack of consistency. These “moral positions” are not thought out at all. They are merely intuitions.
March 1st, 2010 | 11:09 am
Even this non-Catholic can see that if you do not believe in a divine creator, you are not a Catholic despite what you may call yourself.
March 1st, 2010 | 1:45 pm
This reminds me of my long arduous blog study on the American Founding and religious labels, political-theological purposes.
Almost all of the Founders, save a few, were “Christians” for club membership purposes. And they tended to think of themselves as “Christians” (as opposed to non-Christian Deists) for identity as well.
Yet, many of these “Christian” Founders didn’t provably believe in a Triune God or other tenets some see as “non-negotiable” tenets for the label “Christian.”
Jefferson, J. Adams and Franklin blatantly denied these tenets.
March 1st, 2010 | 3:07 pm
Whether morals are “relative” is a question that could be construed differently. I can imagine a Catholic lay person’s thought process going like this–whether a particular action is moral depends on the context (having sex, making a statement, breaking a law, killing a person), and therefore in this sense, what’s right for me is not right for you, therefore morals are relative. That is, someone might (and probably does) just mean that the morality of particular actions, under a certain sort of classification, depends on their context.
All I mean to say is that I’m sure some large subset just misunderstood the question, and does not actually believe that “morals are relative” in the sense in which we think of the question.
March 1st, 2010 | 10:52 pm
Who would call themselves “Catholic” who does not even believe in God???
March 2nd, 2010 | 5:24 am
These statistics seem a little fishy. It’s strange that there are no explanations for the questions. For instance, did they just ask, “Do you believe in God?” If so, then the numbers are lower than most polls, but few major polls would be so generic. More likely it was framed more specifically such as “How confident are you that the Christian God exists?” followed by a variety of answers. These polls will often frame the response negatively such as “Only 65% of millenials are absolutely certain that God exists” (when in fact another 20-25% may be confident or think it’s probable). Basically, unless they reveal their methodology and answers the poll seems useless as an accurate indicator.
March 2nd, 2010 | 6:53 am
[...] First Thoughts: Fifteen Percent of Young Catholics Don’t Believe in God (And Other Depressing Statistics) [...]
March 2nd, 2010 | 9:13 am
If one actually reads the PDF, page 29 shows the question about belief that was asked, and the breakdown (85% believed, 13% unsure, 3% did not believe – rounding creating 101%)
March 2nd, 2010 | 1:23 pm
“Who would call themselves ‘Catholic’ who does not even believe in God???”
I’m Catholic by baptism but nothing more (my lapsed RC mom wasn’t going to, but did so to please my devout grandmother lest I go to Limbo if I died as a baby).
Under some broad definitions of religion I am a “Roman Catholic.”
March 2nd, 2010 | 9:59 pm
Living with doubt is part of the Catholic tradition, and Mother Teresa is a great example: “Such deep longing for God — and … repulsed — empty — no faith — no love — no zeal. (Saving) souls holds no attraction — Heaven means nothing — pray for me please that I keep smiling at Him in spite of everything.” So the 13% who are unsure should not be seen as troubling by default.
March 3rd, 2010 | 11:33 am
I think some Roman Catholics and some Christians (not that they are officially mutually exclusive entities) view themselves as “raised Catholic” or “raised in a Christian household” and consider Catholic or Christian to be like ethnicity (e.g. Italian or German), that it is some aspect of your family life that you grew up with, some shared cultural heritage, but the terms don’t define a belief structure. Perhaps this is similar to how some Jews identify themselves as culturally Jewish with not much connection to studying Torah or Talmud or keeping Sabbath, but with a strong connection to some of the holidays, foods, sense of family, cultural identity, etc.
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