It matters what Catholics think about sex. Just not enough to change their church | Andrew Brown

Two surveys of Catholics in the west suggests that on divorcees, contraception and gay people they are at odds with doctrine, which is often not enforced

Does it matter that the Roman Catholics of Europe and north America overwhelmingly reject some of the church’s sexual teaching? We learned last year that there are still men in the Vatican who don’t think it matters because they haven’t noticed that millions of Catholic disagree with them. The questionnaire sent out in advance of the synod on the family last year contained some questions that would never have occurred to anyone who had actually talked about these things to a heterosexual lay person at any time during the last 30 years. On the other hand it did contain enough realistic questions for the results to be suppressed by the bishops’ conferences in most countries.

The synod on the family has a clear set of changes to make if it is to deal with the families that actually exist today

Related: Pope Francis is a bit like Naomi Klein in a cassock | Giles Fraser: Loose canon

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