Many Catholics have not heard of Vatican II but race harmony and peace high priorities

Snapshot survey challenges Church leaders
By Christopher Howse Half the Catholics in England and Wales have never heard of the Second Vatican Council. That is one of the more surprising findings of a major survey conducted by the University of Surrey, published this week. The field work was done by Gallup Polls and Bishop Philip Harvey acted as observer on behalf of the Bishops' Conference. The survey of 1,023 Catholics in 105 places was the largest ever made and Mr Gordon Heald of Gallup said that one of the main sources of inspiration for it came from a poll of its readers by the Catholic Herald in 1977.
The research aimed at discovering the effectiveness of Catholic schooling and attitudes to parish life, doctrine, religious practice and changes since Vatican II. Much of the investigation could support discussions at the National Pastoral Congress in May. The poll found knowledge and practice of Catholicism lowest among the 15-24 year old group, and this finding mirrors reports From Westminster diocese prepared for the NPC (see page 3). Some 69 per cent of young people had not heard of Vatican II, which ended in 1965.
Archbishop Derek Worlock of Liverpool, chairman of the NPC organising committee commented: "In evaluating percentage views about, for example, the impact of Vatican II, we must remember that these include the answers of the lapsed or virtually lapsed."
The pollsters counted everyone as Catholic who said they had been baptised in the Church, suggesting a national Catholic population of 11 per cent. Of
these, 40 per cent had been to Mass on the last Sunday or since. This compares favourably with a country like Holland with Mass attendance of 26 per cent.
In art introduction to the study. Professor Michael Hornsby
Smith and Raymond Lee stress that there is no way of judging what changes have taken place in Catholic performance, as a survey of this kind has not been attempted before. They suggest that leakage from the Church and lack of confor
mity to its teaching are problems which have been present throughout this century,
Archbishop Worlock called the study 'a snapshot' of Catholics in England and Wales. The interviews were undertaken at the beginning of 1978 and had been ready since before the publishing of a similar survey in Scotland last April.
The Scottish survey was cornmissioned by the Catholic hierarchy, hut who paid for the English one is being kept secret by its publishers. At the time of the Scottish survey, Fr Gerry Burke, then secretary of the National Conference of Priests said that news or an English survey had come to the NCP and the Bishops Conference as a complete surprise. The cost of the new poll is reliably put in five figures.
Many of the survey results confirm the intuitions of bishops and clergy, and follow the Scottish findings. Some look on statistics with suspicion, but the authors say they are confident of the survey's accuracy, even though it tackled less than 0.025 per cent of Catholics in the country.
The fact that the interviewers appear to have found four weekly Mass-goers who do not believe in God, more people believing in heaven than life after death and fewer believing in Hell than in the devil, shows the danger of relying too much on statistics.
Catholics gave overwhelming
support to working for racial harmony (89 per cent of weekly Mass-goers) and rejection to violence for political ends (89 per cent). By contrast only 24 per cent of the group would consider a little cheating on income tax as not really wrong, and only 21 per cent thought even a vaguely worded proposal on euthanasia allowable.
A bias to voting for Labour predictably came through with 57 per cent (national average 47), and only 36 per cent of Catholics backing the Tories (against 42 per cent nationally). The Liberals also come off worse. Again, opinions were canvassed in 1978, before the election.
A result which clearly pained Archbishop Worlock at the press conference was the proportion of Catholics who accepted artificial contraception. Among young people including the lapsed this reached 83 per cent. Actual divorces amohg Catholics also appear to be running at near the national average. This was a challenge to the pastoral mission of the Church, the archbishop said.
Catholic education came out as equal to secular, and received satisfactory reports from parents. The beneficial effects of' Catholic schooling on practice could easily be outweighed by lack of back-up at home or in a future marriage, the report said.