Pew’s recent report on Catholics in the United States notes that around 20 percent of U.S. adults describe themselves as Catholic.
Of this number, only three in ten say they attend Mass weekly or more often, which means that seven in ten Catholics are not practicing their faith. This is necessary context to consider the number of Catholics in the poll, six in ten, who think that abortion should be legal.
To illustrate this distinction, consider an earlier Pew report from May 2022, which noted that:
Among Catholics who attend Mass at least once a week, about two-thirds (68%) say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases, and about half or fewer support exceptions that would make abortion legal in the case of rape (43%) or threats to the life or health of the mother (49%).
Most Mass attenders also believe life begins at conception. Seven-in-ten Catholics who go to church at least once a week say the statement “Human life begins at conception, so a fetus is a person with rights” describes their own views very or extremely well. [Emphasis added]
Nevertheless, even among Catholics who fulfill their Sunday obligation, heretical beliefs are not uncommon. Take Joe Biden, for instance, who attends Mass weekly yet flagrantly disregards his church’s teaching on abortion.
A Catholic who practices selectively is ipso facto a bad Catholic. Cardinal Wilton Gregory, archbishop of Washington, nearly said as much on an Easter Sunday appearance on CBS’s Face the Nation.
Gregory said the president appears to have a “very sincere faith” but is nevertheless a “cafeteria Catholic” who “picks and chooses dimensions of the faith to highlight while ignoring or even contradicting other parts.”
He continued: “You can’t pick and choose. You’re either one who respects life in all of its dimensions, or you have to step aside.”
Or as Jesus Christ put it: “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.”