Latin American Catholics support women priests instead married priests – Pope News

In more than five decades of perusing survey research, I am rarely shocked by a new poll. Yet, what the recent Pew Research Center survey of Latin American Catholics revealed was a great surprise: There is more support in Latin America for women priests than there is for married priests. lets find out why?

Like the overwhelming majority of Catholics on this planet — Americans, that is — I had always assumed: (a), that support for married priests would greatly outpace support for women priests, if only because we wound up with married priests before we even got round to thinking about having women as deacons; and (b), that married priests were going to happen…before women were made into legitimate candidates for ordination. And could celibate women priests come before married priests?

It is very clear where the church hierarchy stands on these matters. It is opposed to both.

But the hierarchy says women cannot be priests for dogmatic reasons and that priests cannot get married because of church law. Therefore, as the pope and bishops would maintain, women cannot be ordained priests because that truth cannot possibly change, whereas holy matrimony can be a mutable discipline.

However, it does not seem that either topic will be covered in the ongoing synod about synodality in Rome — even though laity affirm both issues strongly.

The acceptance of female ordination is widely popular in the United States and Latin America—the survey includes data from six Latin American nations. That number is at its peak in Brazil, with 83% supporting the issue of women’s ordination. In fact, the only country surveyed where fewer than half of Catholics are in favor is Mexico (47 percent), which recently elected its first woman president.

the support for women’s ordination is even higher among Latinos, compared to that in the lowercase U.S. version of their church (64 %). Other countries with higher support than the United States include Argentina (71 percent), Chile (69) and Peru (65).

Still, support for the idea of priests marrying is surprisingly not quite as high. In the US, 69 per cent of those polled support allowing Romish priests to marry, and only 64 per cent agree that women should be ordained.

This is far higher than the level of support for allowing priests to marry: Argentina 64%, Chile 65%, Colombia 52%, Peru 32% and Mexico (47%) – and support in Brazil is at an astonishing 83%.

For most part, the only thing more common is being in favor of same-sex marriage, particularly in Argentina and Mexico.

Given that I am not well-versed in Latin America, I have no insightful analysis of such unexpected results. So maybe Latin Americans are not so patriarchal after all. Or it could be due to centuries of clericalism, where the clergy are seen as holy men who dwell on high far above the common man.

However let us not forget, while the support for woman priests is higher also the proportion who would welcome married priests is impressive. Mexico and Peru are the only countries with lower levels of support (below 50%).