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	Catholics Aware of U.S. Church's Abuse Response Trust More, Study Says By Jerry Filteau Catholic Online April 21, 2006 http://www.catholic.org/national/national_story.php?id=19550 Washington – Those Catholics who say they are aware of the church's policies and actions in response to clergy sexual abuse are more likely to give bishops high marks in leadership, according to a new study released April 19 by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. The study found, however, that the number of Catholics who said they gave to diocesan appeals "declined from 38 percent in April 2002 to 28-29 percent in 2004 and 2005." It said that in a 2003 poll 55 percent of Catholics who had stopped giving to diocesan appeals the previous year said they did so in reaction to the sex abuse cases. But the study found little to no change from 2001 to 2005 in the percentage of Catholics who give to their parish, in their church attendance patterns or in the proportion of U.S. adults who identify themselves as Catholic. For its 38-page study CARA analyzed the results of 10 national telephone surveys of Catholic attitudes and practices between January 2001 and October 2005. The number of respondents in the polls ranged from 500 to 2,100, but most involved responses from at least 1,000 Catholics, giving them a margin of sampling error of 3.1 percent or better. CARA is an independent Catholic research agency based at Georgetown University in Washington. A January 2002 expose of decades of clergy sexual abuse of minors in the Boston Archdiocese burgeoned within months to a national crisis. It led the bishops in June 2002 to adopt a national charter and special legislative norms for the U.S. church to assure a safe environment for children, responsiveness to abuse victims, and firm policies and procedures to remove any priests known to have abused minors. Seven of the 10 CARA polls were commissioned completely or in part by the U.S. bishops' Committee on Communications to understand how the public revelations of clergy sexual abuse and awareness of the church's response were affecting U.S. Catholic attitudes. Four of the surveys were the annual CARA Catholic Poll, including one that was supplemented by questions commissioned by the committee. "Despite the intensity of coverage of sexual abuse allegations in the media, only a minority of Catholics in CARA's polls say they have heard of a priest in their local diocese being accused of sexual abuse," the study said. It said awareness of local cases peaked at 31 percent in early 2004 but, as media coverage gradually declined over the next two years, dropped to 25 percent in late 2005. In the early months of the crisis only 6 percent of Catholics thought priests were more likely to abuse children than men in other professions did, and 30 percent thought men in other professions were more likely to be abusers. In October 2005, 12 percent thought the incidence of abuse was higher among priests and 18 percent thought it was higher among men in other professions. About three-fourths of Catholics say they give regularly to their parish. CARA said the slight differences recorded from one poll to the next were "well within the margin of sampling error" and could indicate a minimal decline or no substantive change. However, CARA found the decline in numbers who say they contribute to the diocese -- from 38 percent in the earliest survey to 29 percent in the latest -- "statistically significant." While it found that those who quit giving to the diocese were the most likely, at 55 percent, to cite the sex abuse issue as a reason, it also found that among those who gave more to the diocese about one-third cited the sex abuse issue as a reason for increasing their contributions. General Catholic satisfaction with church leadership dipped significantly during the sex abuse crisis but gradually climbed back up in 2004-05 to about the same level as before the crisis, according to the study. A question about satisfaction with the leadership of the U.S. bishops, first asked in April 2002, showed that from a low of 53 percent approval in May 2002, satisfaction grew to 74 percent in October 2005. CARA found that in most polls fewer than half those surveyed had heard about the policies the bishops adopted in 2002 to deal with clergy sexual abuse; fewer than a third were aware of steps their own diocese had taken in that area; and one-fifth or fewer knew of major national studies and reports on the issue commissioned by the church. But the study found that Catholics who knew about such policies and actions were significantly more likely than others to say they believe church leaders are enforcing the policies, addressing the problem, protecting children and doing a good job of handling abuse allegations. CARA found that only about one-fifth of Catholics polled knew most of the clergy sex abuse occurred before 1985. Most underestimated the number of victims and only one-fifth knew it was more than 9,000. Most overestimated the number of priests who abused, with about one-third correctly saying it was fewer than 5 percent.
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