Fish Food for Thought

Many fast food restaurants have started their pre-Lent fish sandwich advertising campaigns including Jack in the Box, Wendy’s, and Long John Silver’s. McDonald’s has yet to release a sequel to its memorable 2009 commercials but it has apparently reinvented this as a singing fish decoration (Give me back that filet o' fish, Give me that fish...) available at a retailer near you.

According to estimates from CARA’s national surveys, CARA Catholic Polls (CCP), of the more than 51 million adult Catholics in the United States, 31 million (about six in ten) are expected to abstain from eating meat on Fridays during Lent. Although some may fast and others may choose a vegetarian/vegan option, many will seek out fish on coming Fridays.

Those abstaining from meat are not just the weekly Mass attenders. A majority of Catholics abstaining from meat either attend Mass only a few times a year (25%) or at least once a month, but less than weekly (28%).  However, among the 31 million, 10.5 million attend Mass at least once a week (34%). Of those Catholics who do not abstain from eating meat, 60% "rarely or never" attend Mass.

Of those who do abstain from eating meat on Fridays during Lent:

• Nearly nine in ten have celebrated the Sacrament of Confirmation (89% compared to 74% who do not abstain)
• Nearly eight in ten are in a household registered with a Catholic parish (79% compared to 34% who do not abstain)
• Nearly three in four “agree” that they think of themselves as “a practicing Catholic” (74% compared to 26% who do not abstain)
• A majority are married (53% compared to 48% who do not abstain)
• Four in ten say they regularly wear a crucifix or cross (40% compared to 22% who do not abstain)
• Nearly four in ten self-identify as Hispanic or Latino (39% compared to 36% who do not abstain)
• Nearly four in ten go to confession at least once a year (38% compared to 7% who do not abstain)
• One quarter attended a Catholic high school (25% compared to 17% who do not abstain)
• One in six attended a Catholic college or university (17% compared to 9% who do not abstain)

There are absolutely no generational differences. Catholics both young and old are just as likely to abstain from eating meat on Fridays during Lent.

When CARA first released survey data regarding Lenten practices in Sacraments Today: Belief and Practice among US Catholics we got a message from one concerned reader who worried about the impact of the tradition of eating fish on Fridays during Lent on the sustainability of the world’s fisheries. Here is an interesting article on this topic specific to McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish from The New York Times: “From Deep Pacific, Ugly and Tasty, With a Catch.”

Instead of going the restaurant chain route, many Catholics craving seafood will likely go to a parish fish fry or a local eatery and get a plate that looks much like the image above. If you are wondering what this means nutritionally there is good news and bad news!

Above photo courtesy of rick at Flickr Creative Commons.

Longer-term Effects of Attending a Catholic College

Following up on CARA Working Paper #9 regarding the short-term effects of Catholic college attendance (from the freshman to junior years) on the faith lives of Catholic students it is also the case that CARA has conducted a significant amount of research on the long-term effects (throughout life) of attending a Catholic higher education institution.

CARA's has conducted 19 national surveys of self-identified adult Catholics, including more than 21,000 respondents, since 2000. Within these surveys we find many differences between Catholics who attended a Catholic college and those who attended a non-Catholic college (thus, excluding those who did not go to college).

A summary of some of these key differences is provided below. More is available from the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities (ACCU).

Catholics who attended a Catholic college or university are more likely than Catholics who attended a non-Catholic college (public or private) to:

• Attend Mass every week (34 percent compared to 19 percent)
• Register with a parish (75 percent compared to 55 percent)
• To agree that “I seriously consider the Church’s statements, such as those of the Pope and U.S. Bishops on social, political and moral issues” (55 percent compared to 38 percent)
• To agree that “all human life, from conception to natural death, is sacred. For this reason, the taking of life—whether through abortion, the death penalty, or assisted suicide—is wrong” (53 percent compared to 35 percent)
• To oppose the death penalty (51 percent compared to 33 percent)
• To disagree that “a woman should have the right whether or not to abort an unwanted pregnancy” (44 percent compared to 24 percent)
• To oppose “making it legal for a physician to help a dying person commit suicide” (53 percent compared to 43 percent)
• To agree that “Catholics have a duty to close the gap between the rich and the poor” (54 percent compared to 38 percent)
• To agree that “society has a responsibility for helping poor people get out of poverty” (76 compared to 59 percent)
• To agree that “the United States has a responsibility to take the lead in global peace-building (i.e., non-violent solutions to conflict)” (73 percent compared to 60 percent)
• To agree that “It is important to me to do what I can do to help poor and needy people in countries outside of the United States” (71 percent compared to 54 percent)
• To say that, when making political choices, they draw on their Catholic faith either “very much” or “somewhat” (70 percent compared to 55 percent)
• Among men, those who have attended a Catholic college are more likely to say they considered becoming a priest or brother (43 percent compared to 23 percent)
• Among women, those who have attended Catholic college are more likely to say they considered becoming a sister or nun (39 percent compared to 20 percent)

Across the board, Catholics who have attended a Catholic college or university are more likely than those who attended a non-Catholic college to respond in a manner that is more consistent with Church teachings and practice.

Catholicism on Campus

In 2003, the Cardinal Newman Society asked, “Are Catholic Colleges Leading Students Astray?” After the analysis of longitudinal survey data from a national sample of college students collected by the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), the Cardinal Newman Society answered this question in noting, “[Catholic] graduating seniors are predominantly pro-abortion, approve of homosexual ‘marriage,’ and only occasionally pray or attend religious services” (p.38).

In 2009, CARA submitted a research proposal to HERI’s Spirituality in Higher Education research award program. This proposal, entitled Catholicism on Campus: Stability and change in Catholic student faith by college type, sought to replicate, update, and expand on the Cardinal Newman Society study with more recently collected data by HERI.

CARA was selected as one of the 12 awardees. Over the past year, CARA has been analyzing HERI data and participating in HERI’s Spirituality in Higher Education symposia. Like the Cardinal Newman Society, CARA had no control over the questionnaire design or sampling.

The data CARA analyzed included 14,527 students at 148 U.S. colleges and universities and were collected from students as freshman in 2004 and again to these students as juniors in spring 2007. CARA's analysis focuses primarily on Catholic students and a wider breadth of potential outcomes than studied by the Cardinal Newman Society—including beliefs and attitudes about social and political issues (e.g., abortion, death penalty, same-sex marriage, reducing pain and suffering in the world) as well as religious behavior (e.g., frequency of attendance at religious services, prayer, reading of religious texts and publications). CARA utilized the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1994) and Faithful Citizenship: A Call to Political responsibility from the Catholic Bishops of the United States (USCCB, 2007) to select questions in the survey with measurable outcomes. 

To truly understand the potential effects of Catholic higher education one must isolate changes that are occurring to students’ attitudes and behaviors on campus. Here we agree with the author summarizing the Cardinal Newman Society study who notes, “Regardless of where students begin their college journey, Catholic colleges should be helping students move closer [emphasis added] to Christ, and certainly doing a better job of moving students toward the Catholic faith than secular colleges do” (Reilly, 2003, p. 43). 

Thus, CARA’s analysis is based on the measured differences between the freshman and junior year surveys. Those responding in the same manner in the junior and freshman years are “unchanged” by their college experience. Any other response is one where they have either moved closer or further away from the Church on any given issue or behavior. These methods allow CARA to isolate the changes occurring during college. Also, our analysis includes only those student respondents who self-identified as Catholic on both surveys as these are the only respondents who could be expected to follow the teachings and practices of the faith at both points in time (thus, it excludes college converts and those who leave the faith in college).

The tables below summarize comparisons between Catholic students who are attending a Catholic college or university to those attending a public or state college or university. A more complete analysis including comparisons to all types of colleges is available here in CARA Working paper #9. We show the comparison to public colleges below as this is the type of college attended by most Catholics in the United States.

Catholic students at Catholic colleges and universities are generally less likely than Catholics at public or state colleges and universities to move away from the Church’s teachings on a variety of issues.  However, in some cases, such as abortion, same sex marriage, and Affirmative Action, there is still a net loss of students responding in a manner consistent with Church teachings and statements during college at Catholic institutions. 

In terms of religious practice, Catholics in general are significantly less likely to regularly attend religious services in college than they were in the 12 months prior to initially taking the freshman survey.  This shift represents their departure from their parents’ level of Mass attendance. A decrease in frequency of Mass attendance was least likely among Catholics attending a Catholic college or university if they indicated that they were living with family during the fall semester of their freshman year.

As the table below shows, Catholic students at Catholic colleges and universities are generally less likely than Catholics at public or state colleges and universities to become less religiously active. Yet again, there is still a net loss of activity for Catholics at Catholic colleges in terms of Mass attendance, prayer, and reading about religion and spirituality.  There is a net gain in activity for reading the Bible (or other sacred texts) for students at Catholic colleges.

In comparison to other types of higher educational institutions, CARA’s analysis indicates that Catholic colleges and universities are not the place where students would be most likely to be led astray from Catholic Church teachings and practice. More so, it is unlikely that the changes—both negative and positive—occurring on campus are due to institutional leadership rather than the effects of broader cultural forces that impact students on all types of college campuses.

More broadly, the survey results indicate that Catholic students at Catholic colleges and universities remain profoundly connected to their faith in their junior year with 87 percent saying that seeking to follow religious teachings in everyday life is at least “somewhat important” to them and 86 percent saying their “religiousness” did not become "weaker" in college.  Many move away from the Church on specific issues (while also moving more toward the Church on other issues) but it does not appear that students at Catholic colleges are experiencing some form of broad secularization.