Persistence and change

The fifth survey, also completed in the weeks after Easter, and now six years into the reign of Pope Benedict XVI, provides a portrait showing both persistence and change in the beliefs, practices and attitudes of Catholics as they head into the second decade of the 21st century This fifth survey took place in a time of continuing challenges facing the institutional church, with the sex abuse scandals still the subject of headlines nationally and worldwide; abortion and gender politics causing strains on several levels; the priest shortage, celibacy and the role of women prompting rethinking of the structure of the priesthood; and a prolonged economic recession putting new pressures onto the church's teachings on "a preferential option for the poor," immigration and the rights of workers to organize. The continued growth in the Hispanic portion of the Catholic population, and the importance of the youngest generation (the millennials, those born 1979-93), led us to enlarge the size of the survey sample to enable more detailed analysis controlling for ethnicity within and across generations. [...] we added new questions to probe the issues sketched out above.