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Worship Times
Post-boomer CatholicsAre Catholics getting more liberal or more conservative? It depends on what and whom you ask. Today's youngest adult Catholics (36 years old and younger) may be slightly more conservative than the baby boom generation (37-56 years old) on theological questions but significantly less conservative than older Catholics (57 years old and older). According to a report by Dean R. Hoge in the March 21 issue of America, 57 percent of the post-boomers believe in the real presence. That matches the boomers but falls short of the 79 percent of older Catholics who say they believe in the real presence. Seventy percent of the youngest group believes in Jesus' physical resurrection, which is slightly higher than the 65 percent of the boomers who hold the same belief. However, differences of less than 7 percentage points are insignificant in this data, according to Hoge. Eighty-three percent of older Catholics believe in the resurrection.When it comes to ecclesiological questions, boomers and post-boomers seem to agree that women should be allowed to be priests (61 and 66 percent agree) and that lay people are just as important to the church as priests (86 and 85 percent agree). However, they disagree about the need to go to Mass (63 percent of the boomers think it is not necessary; 73 percent of the post-boomers think it is not necessary). Boomers and post-boomers also agreed on most moral issues except one. Sixty-two percent of the post-boomers think Catholics have a duty to close the gap between the rich and the poor. Forty-eight percent of the baby boomers agreed with that, which matched the percentage of older Catholics who also agreed. However, this stable-to-liberalizing trend does not hold with the ordained. Only 9 percent of the post-boomer priests thought it would be a good idea for parishes to pick their own priests from among those available while 24 percent of both boomer and older Catholic priests thought so. Twenty-four percent of post-boomer priests thought priests should pick their own bishop while 48 and 47 percent of boomer and older Catholic priests thought so. Twenty-six percent of post-boomer priests agreed that celibacy should be optional. Sixty-four percent of the boomer priests thought so and 52 percent of the older priests thought so. And 59 percent of post-boomer priests want to move faster to empower lay people for ministry. Boomer priests agree with that at the rate of 74 percent, and 61 percent of older priests want to move faster. Hoge's report was based on research done by James Davidson and his collaborators, which was published in The Search for Common Ground (1997). What do YOU Think?
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