The Church with Heart Disease

From a statistical point of view, with 64% of the faithful baptized into the Church, the American continent, although characterized by strong contrasts between North and South, still remains the one with the largest number of Catholics in the world.

In its survey published on September 26, 2024, the Pew Research Center (PRC) asked Catholics in seven countries—the United States, Chile, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Argentina—about their positions on several current ethical issues.

A very large majority of those questioned were overwhelmingly in favor of birth control by contraceptive means: the spectrum of responses ranged, in descending order, from Argentinian Catholics (86% in favor) to Peruvians (63% in favor).

Another question was about women’s access to major Orders; with the exception of Mexican Catholics (51% opposed), the majority of the faithful in the six other countries surveyed answered largely in the affirmative.

As for same-sex couples, a majority of Argentinian, Chilean, and American Catholics—70%, 64%, and 54%, respectively—believe that the Church should officially recognize such unions, while the faithful of Peru, Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia are opposed to it.

There is an even greater majority in favor of allowing “divorced-remarried” people access to sacramental Communion: only Mexican Catholics are opposed to it. The same is true of “marriage for priests,” which receives the majority of votes in the countries surveyed, with the exception of Mexican and Peruvian Catholics.

These responses, generally favorable to progressivism, are accompanied by a deterioration of the Pope's image in the countries concerned: while the first Pontiff in history to come from the American continent still enjoys a very high popularity rating, this has declined over the last ten years, mainly among the Catholics of Argentina.

This is no doubt due to the fact that the Argentine Pope has never included his country on his many Apostolic Journeys.

More broadly speaking, the susceptibility of American Catholics to progressive ideas is yet another sign of the slow secularization that a section of the Church, fascinated by the mirages of the conciliar period, has been unable to ward off.

It also shows the erosion of the Church's preaching on these issues, which no longer preaches the truth, or does so in a very biased way. The result can only be the one before us, for if the successors of the Apostles were to use the power that is theirs, in preaching Jesus Christ, souls would convert and remain Catholic.