Surveys of Catholic priests in the United States dating back to the 1980s have shown that newer priests-and the priesthood in the aggregate-are becoming more conservative on moral, ecclesial, political, and theological issues. The present study examined whether this long-observed conservative shift has continued up to the present day using data from two surveys of Catholic priests: a 2002 Los Angeles Times survey of priests and the 2020-2021 Survey of American Catholic Priests, which largely replicated the former. Comparisons of means across surveys and analyses based on decade of ordination both revealed that Catholic priests in the United States are increasingly conservative on issues of moral belief, attitudes concerning who should and should not qualify for ordination, as well as politics and theology. Regression models demonstrated that having been ordained more recently was consistently associated with holding more conservative beliefs, net of other factors. More religiously observant priests, captured by frequency of praying the Divine Office, were more likely to be conservative on every question asked. The major exception to the conservative shift are priests self-reporting as entirely homosexual, who tend to be more liberal than heterosexual priests on a range of topics.

This study addressed internal secularization in the Catholic Church by testing the role of several factors in priests' assessments of the state of the Church in the United States, priests' views of whether the Church's situation is getting better or worse, and their attitudes toward Pope Francis. Comparisons with identical questions fielded in 2002 revealed a striking pessimistic turn among priests over the last two decades. In addition, regression analyses using the 2021 Survey of American Catholic Priests revealed that "in-house" factors-namely, attitudes toward Pope Francis and perceptions of how well bishops have restored confidence in the Catholic Church following the sexual abuse crisis-most powerfully predicted priests' current pessimism. On top of this, politically conservative priests and priests ordained more recently tended to be most critical of how Francis is handling his duties, signaling a pronounced tension inside the Catholic Church over religious authority, a defining feature of internal secularization.

In order to align with their inner sense of gender identity, adolescents suffering from gender dysphoria are increasingly being treated with cross-sex hormones and irreversible surgeries to alter their bodies. The present study is the first to examine attitudes about these recently emergent medical practices in a national population. We used data from the 2018 Post-Midterm Election Study, a survey representative of adults in the USA ages 20 to 65 years (N = 5285), to examine the social factors associated with approval or disapproval of hormonal and/or surgical interventions for adolescents seeking medical treatment for gender dysphoria. Higher fertility, race/ethnicity (in this case, black), sex (male), and heterosexual self-identity were each robustly associated with disapproval. Nested regression models revealed that a range of religion measures were statistically significant (toward disapproval). However, all but evangelical self-identification were no longer significant after accounting for support for abortion rights, the spectrum of political self-identification, and voting behavior. These findings, prompted by a high percentage of variance explained, led us to consider perspectives on medical transitions for adolescents as fitting the “culture war” framework, largely polarized between a “progressive” worldview of bodily autonomy and an “orthodox” worldview of bodily integrity.

This manuscript introduces the 2021 Survey of American Catholic Priests (SACP), a data- gathering initiative which resulted in a new dataset containing responses to 54 survey questions from 1,036 Catholic priests in the United States. Replicating questions from a 2002 poll of Catholic priests from the Los Angeles Times allowed us to assess changes over time. Here, we present selected findings in eight areas: summary comparisons, morale, moral assessments, relationships to and evaluations of bishops, salvation exclusivism, perceptions of the conservatism or liberalism of younger priests, approval of Pope Francis, and the state of the Catholic Church in America. We find strong empirical confirmation of the nearly ubiquitous perception that younger priests are more orthodox in their beliefs than older priests. Additionally, we find a significant turn toward pessimism regarding the current state and trajectory of the Church. Other patterns and opportunities for further analyses are discussed.

This study explores the results of the 2021 Survey of American Catholic Priests, an effort to replicate the 2002 Los Angeles Times survey of priests, in evaluating stability and change in the sexual beliefs, dispositions, and behaviors of Catholic priests in the United States. Reinforcing widespread perceptions, we find that younger priests hold more conservative sexual attitudes than their older counterparts. We also find them to be less likely to report homosexual attraction, and we perform a very basic projection of the future sexual orientation composition of the US clergy using baseline assumptions and a cohort replacement model. We find that orientation and orthodoxy are intertwined, with heterosexual priests reporting higher celibacy adherence and belief that behaviors identified by the Church as sins are in fact sins. Our analyses further suggest that the present lower clergy supply is largely explicable by a decline in progressive priests.

The social scientific study of same-sex households with children has come a long way in 10 years. Better quality data collection is now available. However, this is no guarantee that consistently sensible analyses and reasonable conclusions are imminent, because the “consensus” that children from same-sex households fare no differently than children from opposite-sex households—in particular, married families—is a carefully guarded social construction. The consensus is the result of sampling decisions, analytic comparisons, and interpretations of results that often indicate baseline differences prior to statistical controls for household instability, after which they commonly disappear. It is this variable—relationship dissolution—that remains demonstrably different between same-sex and opposite-sex relationships, even in the most tolerant of societies. The point of this article is neither to trumpet nor dispute any particular study’s conclusion in the domain of parental influence on children’s outcomes. Rather, I seek to explain how the consensus around “no differences” came to be, and how it is reinforced, despite evidence that it was, and remains, premature.

Marriage has come a long way since biblical times: Women are no longer thought of as property, and practices like polygamy have long been rejected. The world is wealthier and healthier, and people are more able to find and form relationships than ever. So why are Christian congregations doing more burying than marrying today? Explanations for the wide recession in marriage range from the mathematical—more women in church than men—to the economic, and from cheap sex to progressive politics. But perhaps marriage hasn’t really changed at all; instead, there is simply less interest in marriage in an era marked by technology, gender equality, and secularization. This is a book about how today’s Christians find a mate within a faith that esteems marriage but a world that increasingly yawns at it, and it draws on in-depth interviews with nearly two hundred young adult Christians from the United States, Mexico, Spain, Poland, Russia, Lebanon, and Nigeria, in order to understand the state of matrimony in global Christian circles today. Marriage for nearly everyone has become less of a foundation for a couple to build upon and more of a capstone. Christians are exhibiting flexibility over sex roles but are hardly gender revolutionaries. Meeting increasingly high expectations of marriage is difficult, though, in a free market whose logic reaches deep into the home today, and the results are endemic uncertainty, slowing relationship maturation, and stalling marriage. But plenty of Christians innovate, resist, and wed, suggesting the future of marriage will be a religious one.

Abstract There are practical ways Christians can stimulate marriage. First, there are beautiful stories about marriage out there; tell them. Second, cultivate marriage-friendly subcultures; participation in vibrant Christian organizations can resist the emergent global “monoculture” that undermines marriage. Third, construct the home as a haven from market mentalities. Fourth, seek improvement in premarital preparation; new marriages need mentors to help them understand what to expect. Fifth, aid and support suffering marriages in your midst; there is such a thing as the “good enough” marriage. Sixth, parents need to be thoughtful about the relationship advice they give (or fail to offer) their children. Seventh, young adults should weigh the costs and benefits of living at home until they are married. Eighth, governments should consider creative ways to support marriage. They can be expensive, but it is riskier to ignore the decline of marriage than to explore new ways to revitalize it.

Men’s earnings have become less important as a predictor of marriage rates in a world where women are thriving educationally and economically. Standards have risen. There are wide and high expectations for material well-being in marriage. Christians respond to these trends by exhibiting sex role flexibility in marriage—and often dual incomes—but they are not gender revolutionaries about marriage. Their behavior reveals no interest in overhauling longstanding sex role expectations. At its core, marriage is a relationship of interdependence. Insofar as spouses become functionally similar, marriage becomes less necessary and should become less popular—as is occurring today. Marriage rates are shrinking because of increasing disinterest in what marriage actually is. Marriage will never disappear, however, and its four key expectations—fidelity, totality, permanence, and children—are not social constructions. Public relations campaigns can win ballot initiatives and judges can alter marriage laws, but they cannot ignite new interest in marriage.

Men’s earnings have become less important as a predictor of marriage rates in a world where women are thriving educationally and economically. Standards have risen. There are wide and high expectations for material well-being in marriage. Christians respond to these trends by exhibiting sex role flexibility in marriage—and often dual incomes—but they are not gender revolutionaries about marriage. Their behavior reveals no interest in overhauling longstanding sex role expectations. At its core, marriage is a relationship of interdependence. Insofar as spouses become functionally similar, marriage becomes less necessary and should become less popular—as is occurring today. Marriage rates are shrinking because of increasing disinterest in what marriage actually is. Marriage will never disappear, however, and its four key expectations—fidelity, totality, permanence, and children—are not social constructions. Public relations campaigns can win ballot initiatives and judges can alter marriage laws, but they cannot ignite new interest in marriage.

/////////////~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~ In the United States, about 80 percent of young people experience sexual intercourse at some point during their teenage years (Singh and Darroch 1999). One important but poorly understood pathway that shapes sexual practice is religion and spirituality. There are numerous ways in which reli- gion could affect adolescent sexuality and its practice, including contracep- tive decisions, nonmarital sexual activities, and use of pornography. Religion can also influence sexual choices indirectly through its effects on friendship choices and dating patterns (Wallace and Williams 1997). Yet how religion in fact contributes to sexual values and behaviors is not well documented. Research on religion and adolescent sexual behavior is still considered nascent . . . despite the fact that researchers have been conducting stud- ies on the topic for at least four decades (Whitehead, Wilcox, and Rostosky 2001, 46). This chapter takes a solid step in the direction of making the asso- ciation of religion and adolescent sexuality clearer, drawing upon data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) and the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR). I first highlight a number of the key recent studies in the field of religion and adolescent sexual behavior and then outline a conceptual framework by which religious influences on adolescent sexual behavior are typically understood. Finally, I address three research questions: 1. What are current levels of various sexual behaviors (e.g., virginity loss, oral sex, pornography use)? 2. Do these vary by religion—that is, religious affi liation, identity, and behaviors?

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Abstract Men’s earnings have become less important as a predictor of marriage rates in a world where women are thriving educationally and economically. Standards have risen. There are wide and high expectations for material well-being in marriage. Christians respond to these trends by exhibiting sex role flexibility in marriage—and often dual incomes—but they are not gender revolutionaries about marriage. Their behavior reveals no interest in overhauling longstanding sex role expectations. At its core, marriage is a relationship of interdependence. Insofar as spouses become functionally similar, marriage becomes less necessary and should become less popular—as is occurring today. Marriage rates are shrinking because of increasing disinterest in what marriage actually is. Marriage will never disappear, however, and its four key expectations—fidelity, totality, permanence, and children—are not social constructions. Public relations campaigns can win ballot initiatives and judges can alter marriage laws, but they cannot ignite new interest in marriage.

Two general concerns remain following this updated and corrected study of structural stigma's effect on the premature mortality of sexual minorities. First, there seem to be better and worse ways to measure structural stigma. Scholars should be invested in best-possible measures. Second, remaining questions about measures and expectations suggest more attention be paid to an optimal modeling approach to predicting health outcomes among sexual minorities, one that neither underspecifies nor overspecifies models, but aims instead at better understanding stigma processes in population-based samples, not just searching for its effects.

Drawing upon a large, recent probability sample of American adults ages 18–60 (7648 men and 8090 women), we explored the association between sexual frequency and masturbation, evaluating the evidence for whether masturbation compensates for unavailable sex, complements (or augments) existing paired sexual activity, or bears little association with it. We found evidence supporting a compensatory relationship between masturbation and sexual frequency for men, and a complementary one among women, but each association was both modest and contingent on how content participants were with their self-reported frequency of sex. Among men and women, both partnered status and their sexual contentment were more obvious predictors of masturbation than was recent frequency of sex. We conclude that both hypotheses as commonly evaluated suffer from failing to account for the pivotal role of subjective sexual contentment in predicting masturbation.