Vatican survey results reveal huge appetite for reform

European Catholics in huge numbers appear to have made plain their desire for sweeping reforms in the Church’s teaching on the family. The calls come in the responses to the Vatican questionnaire on the family and sexual morality that will inform the Synod on the Family later this year.

In France, Belgium and the Netherlands, unofficial versions of the Vatican’s survey of attitudes to family issues conducted late last year have produced results that echo those published in neighbouring Germany’s official summary last week. In Switzerland, the ­bishops’ conference also released an official summary that referred to the “alarming alienation” between church teaching and the way Catholics lived their lives.

However, a worldwide poll found contrasting views among Catholics in Europe and Africa on the main issue of contention: the refusal of Communion to remarried divorcees whose first marriages have not been annulled. The poll of 12,000 Catholics by univision.com (Univision is a TV network serving Hispanic America) found that in Europe 75 per cent of Catholics disagreed with church teaching on divorce, remarriage and Communion, while only 19 per cent agreed. But in Africa the percentages were precisely reversed.

In Latin America, 67 per cent disagreed with the Church and 30 per cent agreed; in the United States, 59 per cent disagreed and 32 per cent agreed; and in the Philippines 46 per cent disagreed with the Church on the issue, while half agreed.

In France, an online survey by the Catholic daily La Croix showed responses about the remarried divorced aroused the most “suffering and anger”. Montpellier Archbishop Pierre-Marie Carré, who edited the bishops’ survey, told the paper that Pope Francis was “well aware of the expectations and therefore the risks” that the survey has created.
The Swiss bishops’ conference announced the results of the Vatican questionnaire on the family at a press conference in Bern on 4 February at which all the bishops were present. The conference president, Bishop Markus Büchel of St Gallen, said the Church must now grapple with the conflicting priorities between what it taught and what Catholics practised. “It is indeed alarming when so great an alienation between the Church’s teaching, and what Catholics are convinced gives meaning to their lives, becomes so blatantly apparent,” he said.

The Church’s teaching on sexual morality would have to change, Büchel said. It was a case of finding ways for the Church to live up to its “high ideals” while enabling people’s lived reality to include their faith, he said, adding that it might be necessary to find special provisions for the different continents. “Under Pope Francis, new beginnings are now possible,” he said. Bishop Denis Theurillat, a Basle auxiliary, drew attention to the high number of priests and pastoral assistants who had expressed a wish for the Church to show greater mercy. “We have been invited to build a bridge between the World Church and our diocesan faithful,” he told Vatican Radio.

Meanwhile, Bishop Stephan Ackermann of Trier, Germany’s oldest diocese, told the Allgemeine Zeitung that the responses “quite clearly” showed that the Catholic Church’s teaching on sexual morality was seen as a “repressive morality full of prohibitions” and as “remote from life”.

“We must strengthen people’s sense of responsibility but it then follows that we must respect their decisions of conscience,” Ackermann said. It was no longer in keeping with the times to say that a second marriage was a permanent mortal sin and to ­permanently refuse remarried divorcees the sacraments. It was also untenable to declare every act of cohabitation a grievous sin, and people no longer understood the difference between natural and artificial contraception, he said. “You cannot say ‘either the ideal – or condemnation’,” Ackermann underlined.

Catholic media and institutions in Belgium and the Netherlands  organised surveys using edited versions of the Vatican’s sometimes complex questions. Belgium’s Catholic University of Leuven (KUL) polled 1,853 Flemish Catholics, most of them active in their parishes. Large majorities wanted liberalisation of church teachings – over 80 per cent on artificial birth control and Communion for remarried divorcees, over 70 per cent on homosexuality and pre-marital sex. Katholiek.nl, a lay Dutch website, reported that its online survey showed “a large gap between bishops and believers”. It gave no details, but said results matched those published in Germany. The US, Canadian, Australian and England and Wales bishops’ conferences have indicated they will not be making the Vatican ­questionnaire findings public.