The recent national poll of Catholics indicating the laity has more concern over economic and poverty issues than non-negotiable moral issues should be a wakeup call to American bishops that either they failed to adequately communicate the “social doctrine” of the Church or the laity and some theologians have decided to ignore it in favor of a narrow understanding of “social justice.”
I would like to think that something is wrong with the poll but I suspect that many American Catholics believe “freedom of conscience” means the right to embrace a convenient and limited subset of the faith and moral teaching of the Church and excludes the responsibility to form ones conscience in accord with all of it.
If nothing else, the poll definitely demonstrates the urgent need for a New Evangelization rather than the implied need for bishops to cater to the whims of the laity.
Jim Devereaux
Ijamsville