Catholic clergy on abortion: Preliminary findings of a New York state survey.

The Catholic Church's official condemnation of direct abortion and its opposition to laws permitting such abortions under any circumstances are well known. Numerous surveys, however, have indicated that the attitudes of individual Catholics are not nearly so monolithic. Indeed, the majority of Catholics, although opposed to abortion on request, say they approve of abortions where there is danger to the mother's health, or in cases of rape or the likelihood of a defective child. (1) But the strength of the Catholic Church's opposition to abortion cannot be measured by such surveys of Catholic attitudes. As noted by N. J. Demerath and P. E. Hammond:

Even though Catholicism's indirect influence on society through its parishioners may he reduced, considerable direct influence remains... Because Catholics are the largest single denomination in America and because they are especially organized to fight bureaucratic fire with bureaucratic fire, Catholicism has considerable leverage as a pressure group. (2)

The attitudes and behavior of priests may, therefore, play an important role in determining the future of legal abortion in the United States. The efforts of Catholic clergy, among others, to prevent the liberalization of state abortion laws prior to the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decisions in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton met with success in some states, such as Michigan in 1972, and failure in others, such as Washington in 1970. The Supreme Court decisions abruptly changed the national situation; but the opposition of some local Catholic clergy may still be felt in many ways, ranging from supporting state statutes asserting the right of institutions and individuals to refuse on grounds of conscience to perform abortions, to supporting a Constitutional amendment nullifying the Supreme Court decisions and restricting the performance of abortions.

It is usually assumed that, whereas Catholic priests may disagree with the official Church position on contraception, almost all are in full accord with traditional Church teaching on abortion, namely that "the directly intended termination of pregnancy before viability is never permitted, nor is the directly intended destruction of a viable fetus."(3) (Permissible "indirect" abortions are restricted to such situations as removal of a cancerous womb when the woman is pregnant.)

Evidence from a study of the eight Catholic dioceses in New York State indicates that priests are not nearly so unanimous about Church teaching on abortion as has been assumed. Not only is there noticeable disagreement and doubt but, even among those who uphold the Church teaching, there is disagreement as to whether their beliefs should be translated into restrictive abortion legislation.

The Study

The data are taken from a larger study dealing with the manner and intensity with which the eight Catholic dioceses of New York State opposed New York's 1970 liberalized abortion law. (*) The larger study included a survey questionnaire mailed to a random sample of the state's priests. The survey was conducted in the last three months of 1972, and achieved an overall response rate of 49 percent, yielding a total of 931 usable cases. The cases are divided among three samples: