Scholar Q&A: Brad Vermurlen, Ph.D.

Priests are pessimistic about the state of the Catholic Church in the U.S. and, on average, are less satisfied with their own lives than they reported two decades earlier. 

That’s among the findings from a recent survey of 1,036 Catholic priests across the country.

The survey of American Catholic Priests was conducted by the Austin Institute for the Study of Family and Culture.

A report on its findings, published in November 2021 was co-authored by Dr. Brad Vermurlen, an IACS Generations in Dialogue participant and research associate at the University of Texas, Austin.

IACS spoke to Vermurlen about the survey results.

What are some of the major takeaways from the survey?

The Survey of American Catholic Priests (SACP) included 54 questions, and I think nearly all the responses say something interesting about Catholic priests in the U.S.

Some of the biggest takeaways involve shifts in the American priesthood. The SACP has two ways of establishing whether priests are changing over time. One is by comparing answers on the SACP to responses to the same questions from different surveys from previous decades. The SACP intentionally used the same questions as earlier surveys in order to be able to make that kind of comparison. The other way is by taking responses from the SACP by itself and breaking them down by the decade in which priests were ordained to the priesthood. That approach allows us to examine how answers differ, depending on whether the priests were ordained in the 1970s, 80s, 90s, 00s, or since 2010.

Both of those approaches revealed that Catholic priests are becoming increasingly conservative on a host of moral, political and church issues. The SACP asked questions about seven specific moral issues, and on each of these we found a conservative shift. American Catholic priests tend nowadays to be more conservative by their own self-identification on the political spectrum. They are also more conservative on whether faith in Christ is the sole path to salvation. And they are increasingly conservative on church matters such as married priests and female priests, i.e. their opposition to those ideas. Many are critical of Pope Francis, who is broadly perceived as more progressive. Often, the differences between priests ordained in particular decades were especially stark, with the most recent cohorts being the most conservative. This all is in alignment with the handful of nationwide surveys of Catholic priests conducted since the mid 1980s, which also revealed shifts toward conservative positions.

Another major takeaway concerns priests’ overall assessment of the state of the Catholic Church in America. The SACP asked respondents to rate how things are going in the Catholic Church in the U.S. (“good,” “not so good,” “poor,” etc.), and also sought their perceptions of the trajectory of the American Catholic Church, i.e. whether things are “getting better,” “staying about the same,” or “getting worse.”  Both of these questions replicated questions asked on a 2002 survey of U.S. priests, which meant we had a direct comparison. And on both questions — both rating and perceived trajectory — we found an unambiguous turn toward pessimism since 2002. As just one data-point, in 2002, 39% of priests surveyed rated things in the Church as “not so good” or “poor,” whereas two decades later, 65% of priests rated things as “not so good” or “poor.” Interestingly, the most important changes on these questions are not between ordination cohorts but between the 2002 survey as a whole and the SACP as a whole. Regardless of the decade in which they were ordained, priests’ assessments of the state of the Church moved overall toward the negative.

A third theme — if only because the survey has multiple questions on it — centers on sexual identities, behaviors and attitudes among the priesthood. The SACP includes data on Catholic priests’ own sexual orientations; their experiences with celibacy; the perceived existence of homosexual subcultures in seminaries, dioceses and religious institutes; whether gay men should qualify for the priesthood; whether homosexual behavior is a sin, and more. My co-authors and I have posted a working paper to a popular research repository that closely examines many of these topics in detail, and a summary is also available online. The gist of the findings on sexuality is that homosexuality is gradually diminishing in the American Catholic priesthood, and other related attitudes and behaviors are increasingly coming into line with what the Church teaches, especially among priests who are not homosexual.

Was there anything that surprised you from the survey results?

Not much. However, one unexpected thing we uncovered is that Catholic priests, on average, report being slightly less satisfied with their own lives in 2021 than the priests who responded to surveys two decades earlier. In 2002, 72% of priests said they were “very satisfied” with their life as a priest, but by 2021 that figure had dropped to 62%. The average (mean) response to that question, too, showed a statistically significant move between 2002 and 2021 away from being “very satisfied” with life. This is surprising mostly because past research tends to find a correlation between conservatism and priests being satisfied with their lives. The broad conservative shifts we found would have led us to expect that life satisfaction had at least stayed the same, if not improved, but in fact we found the opposite. More detailed analyses remain to be done on why that is, but it looks like other factors — maybe the turn toward pessimism regarding the state and trajectory of the Catholic Church in America — are overriding any effect that increased conservatism would have on priests’ life satisfaction.

Why are the results important?

I’m a social scientist, and one of my main research interests is in American religion, so I’m likely more inclined than your average person to find empirical insights about religion inherently important. Part of it is just knowledge — detailed knowledge about what is going on with and among clergy of the Catholic Church in the U.S. On a deeper level, though, the Catholic tradition is arguably the greatest force for dignity and order in the world today. American society and culture are more likely to be healthy when the Catholic Church is well too.

Are there any practical ramifications from what the survey found?

I’m sure there are. The SACP includes good data on resource allocation, working hours, priests’ relationships to their bishops, priests’ well-being and other things that could inform the Catholic hierarchy. But ultimately, as a social scientist, I don’t think it’s my job to offer prescriptions or advice to religious communities. The Catholic Church especially is a religious body that importantly possesses its own interior integrity and self-direction. My job instead is to describe and explain the social aspects of human life as best I can. One problem in the discipline of sociology of religion right now is that researchers crunch survey data and then make normative judgments about theology and ecclesiology. In my view, that doesn’t work. So while the results of this study likely have practical ramifications for the Catholic Church in America, I must leave it up to leaders of that religious tradition to judge and, if needed, implement changes.

Did any questions from the survey results emerge for you that have yet to be answered?

Yes, there are several unanswered questions. As just one example, in a document providing an overview of select findings, we established that Catholic priests are more pessimistic today than in years past about the state and direction of the Catholic Church in America, but in that document we only speculated about why that might be. My co-authors and I are currently finishing a paper that uses basic regression modeling techniques to demonstrate exactly which factors — also captured on the survey — are associated with priests being more optimistic or pessimistic. That is an exercise that can be repeated for several other findings from the SACP. Why do some priests spend more hours in the confessional than others? What factors are associated with a better or worse evaluation of how Pope Francis is handling his duties? Why do some priests have a closer relationship with their bishop than others? Do priests working in urban, suburban, and rural settings differ in any consistent ways? And so on. There is no shortage of additional analyses to do. In fact, toward that end, we have submitted the full SACP dataset to the Association of Religion Data Archives, where it will soon be free to download and other religion analysts can employ it to see what questions they can answer too.

Editor’s Note: Follow Brad Vermurlen on Twitter at @brad_vermurlen