Most Roman Catholics say church teachings shape their views of marriage, yet they also get some tenets wrong and are largely accepting of divorce, a new survey found. 70% of married U.S. Catholics were either wed in a Catholic church or have had their marriages blessed by the church, according the survey by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University.
A majority of Catholics - 55% - said their opinions about marriage have been at least ''somewhat'' informed by church teaching.
Most accurately described church teachings about the sacrament of marriage, including that the church does not consider a civil marriage after divorce to be sacramentally valid.
However, 76% of adult Catholics also said divorce is acceptable in some cases.
Misconceptions also were discovered. The survey found six in 10 Catholics have heard that a non-Catholic spouse must promise to have the couple's children raised Catholic, which has not been the case since a change in canon law in 1983.
On the whole, Catholics were comparable to the U.S. population in marriage demographics, including marriage age and frequency of divorce, the study found.
The survey of 1,008 self-identified Catholic adults, conducted in June 2007, was commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Marriage and Family Life.
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