Topline
An overwhelming majority of American Catholics think it’s time for the church to change its longstanding ban on birth control, a new Pew Research Center poll showed Thursday, along with a slew of other changes related to marriage and sexuality.
A woman holds rosary beads on March 13, 2013 in Vatican City.
Key Facts
The Pew poll surveyed Catholics in six Latin American countries and the United States to find that Americans are among the most progressive in the region when it comes to a variety of social issues, and that they disagree with some of the church’s more conservative stances.
Argentina, the United States and Chile were home to the most progressive Catholics and, in all three countries, a majority agreed with amending five long standing rules to allow Catholics to use birth control, women to become priests, priests to marry, gay and lesbian marriages to be recognized and to allow those who are unmarried, but living with a romantic partner, to take communion.
Allowing the use of birth control was the most widely agreed upon change (83% of surveyed American Catholics agreed), followed by allowing unmarried couples to take communion (75%), priests to marry (69%), women to become priests (64%) and recognizing gay and lesbian marriages (54%).
Those same concepts were much less favored in the countries of Mexico, Peru, Colombia and Brazil—the other countries included in the Pew survey—but allowing the use of birth control was agreed upon by a majority of Catholics in all seven countries.
The support for new stances on social issues comes as religious participation, particularly among Catholics, declines in the United States and those who’ve left Catholicism have cited the church’s teachings on birth control and the clergy sex abuse crisis as reasons why.
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Key Background
The Roman Catholic Church officially banned all artificial forms of birth control, including condoms, in 1930. At the time, the church preached that any devices tampering with the “male seed” was akin to murder. In 1951, Pope Pius XII approved the rhythm method—or tracking a woman’s ovulation using her menstrual cycle—for couples who had “morally valid reasons for avoiding procreation.” Since then, the church has had to make exceptions and establish specific rules as available contraceptives and reproductive technologies have progressed. In 1957, the church allowed women with irregular cycles take the pill to regulate them and better enable them to practice the rhythm method but still does not allow the use of the pill solely for birth control. In 1968, the church solidified its ban on all artificial contraceptives—with the exception of the birth control pill for medical, non contraceptive reasons—and its stance has largely been unchanged since. The Catholic doctrine preaches that life begins at conception and the church is opposed to abortion, but does allow for “morally neutral medical procedures designed to save a pregnant woman’s life that may have an unintended side-effect of causing a child to die in the womb, such as the removal of a cancerous uterus.”
Tangent
Church attendance has declined among most U.S. religious groups, a Gallup study found in March, but Catholics showed the largest drop among any religion—falling from 45% attendance from 2000 to 2003 to 33% between 2021 and 2023. Only two religious groups included in Gallup’s research did not see a decline in attendance among Americans between 2000 and 2023: Muslims and Jews. Church attendance actually rose 7% in that time period among Jewish people and 4% among Muslims.
