Roman Catholic Opinion

Posted on September 12, 2010 by Clive D. Field

The recent spate of surveys triggered by the forthcoming papal visit continues with the publication this morning of a ComRes poll of a random sample of 500 UK Catholics conducted for the BBC between 6 and 9 September. Interviews were by telephone.

The full results from this poll have not yet been released.* The following headline findings are based on the discussion in today’s Sunday programme on BBC Radio 4 (which can be heard for the next seven days via the BBC iPlayer service) and on a BBC News press release at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11274308

69% of Catholics expect the forthcoming papal visit to Scotland and England to be helpful to the Catholic Church in Britain. 14% fear it will be unhelpful and 17% are uncertain.

57% do not consider that their Catholic faith is generally valued by British society, almost twice the proportion who think that it is (30%), with 13% don’t knows.

62% of Catholics believe that women should have more authority and status in the Catholic Church. Identical numbers of men and women say this, but younger Catholics rather more than older ones. 30% disagree and 8% don’t know. This question was somewhat vague, but it will doubtless have been interpreted by some respondents as being code for their views on women priests.

49% of Catholics seek a relaxation in the Church’s rules on clerical celibacy, with a high of 63% for the 35-54 age cohort. 35% oppose any change and 17% don’t know what to think.

52% of Catholics claim that their faith in the leadership of the Catholic Church has been shaken by the priestly sexual abuse scandals and their subsequent handling. This is perhaps a lower figure than might have been expected, although it is ambiguous whether leadership refers to that of the Church in Britain or more globally. 43% state that their faith has not been shaken.

Commenting on the results, the ComRes chairman Andrew Hawkins writes: ‘Overall there is a sense of strong support for the Pope’s visit but disquiet both about some aspects of Papal teaching and the perception of the Catholic Church in wider society having been harmed.’

* POSTSCRIPT: The full data tabulations (with breaks by age, gender, region and social class) were later posted at:

http://www.comres.co.uk/page165564311.aspx

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Christian Research and Churchgoing

Posted on September 11, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Two articles in yesterday’s broadsheet press gave somewhat conflicting assessments of the state of religion in contemporary Britain, in the lead-in to the papal visit to Britain, which starts next Thursday.

Writing in The Guardian, Julian Glover portrayed ‘a nation of fuzzy doubters’, with believers and churchgoers in a minority but a cultural identity with Christianity still strong. There were extensive quotes from BRIN’s David Voas of the University of Manchester, who has documented (through the 2008 British Social Attitudes – BSA – Survey and other research) that there is a large middle-ground of ‘fuzzy people who don’t really care’ about religion. ‘It is not the case that Britain is getting more religious’, Voas was quoted. Glover’s article can be found at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/10/religion-typical-briton-fuzzy-believer

The other piece was by Martin Beckford in the Daily Telegraph under the headline of ‘Churchgoing stabilises after years of decline, research shows’. ‘Figures obtained from several of England’s main Christian denominations suggest that the numbers of worshippers in the pews each Sunday are either stable or increasing,’ wrote Beckford. ‘The data run counter to the widely-held views that the country is becoming more secular.’ This article can be accessed at:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/7992616/Churchgoing-stabilises-after-years-of-decline-research-shows.html

The source of Beckford’s report was an exclusive guest post by Benita Hewitt (Director of Christian Research) on the influential Church Mouse blogsite. It was headlined ‘Church attendance in the UK no longer in decline’ and was described as ‘rather earth shattering’ news by the Mouse in the introduction to Hewitt’s post.

Hewitt herself was clear that, in the light of the Anglican, Catholic and Baptist statistics analysed to date, ‘the previous forecasts made showing continued decline have been superseded’ and that the Church is ‘no longer a dying institution but a living movement’. Her post appears at:

http://churchmousepublishing.blogspot.com/2010/09/christian-research-church-attendance-in.html

In the case of the Church of England, Hewitt demonstrated fairly steady attendance over several years on the basis of average monthly and average weekly congregations. But these are only two of a basket of measures now used by the Church of England to enumerate religious practice.

Hewitt failed to mention that the most long-standing indicator of Anglican churchgoing, usual Sunday attendance, fell by 8% between 2002 and 2008. Similarly, while she observed that her statistics exclude Christmas and Easter churchgoing, she does not note that both Easter congregations and Easter communicants fell by 4% between 2002 and 2008. Christmas communicants also dropped by 11% during the same period, although Christmas attendances rose slightly.

Moreover, Church of England baptisms were down by 8% between 2002 and 2008, confirmations by 19%, marriages and blessings by 6%, funerals by 16% and electoral roll membership by 3%. The overall picture is, therefore, more mixed than the one Hewitt paints.

For English and Welsh Roman Catholics, Hewitt observed that the decline in mass attendance was halted in 2005 and the figure has been steady since then. She does not offer any explanation for this.

Most commentators would attribute this trend, not to the religious practice of indigenous Catholics (which is probably still declining), but to the positive impact of immigration, from Eastern Europe and elsewhere, of devout Catholics.

With the economic recession, the net inflow of Eastern European Catholics (for example, from Poland) now seems to be turning into a net outflow, so this immigrant brake on the decline in mass-going may be purely temporary.

An even cheerier assessment is given by Hewitt of the state of the Baptist Union of Great Britain, whose church attendance rose between 2007 and 2008. It is certainly the case that, on a number of measures, the Baptists can be shown to have bucked the secularizing trend, including being more successful than most mainstream Christian denominations in reaching ethnic minorities.

Here again, however, Hewitt only tells part of the story. Overall, the Baptist data for 2002-08 are mixed. For more information, see the earlier BRIN news post at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/?p=69.

The Methodist Church is a fourth denomination to collect church attendance statistics, but they publish them only triennially, with the next data not due until summer 2011. The most recent figures showed an average decline of 14% in all age whole week attendance between 2005 and 2007, with even greater decreases for children (32%) and young people (30%).

The problem with using denominational data for calculating church attendance is that, because differing methodologies and periodicities are employed, the information is not truly comparable. Also, of course, many denominations do not count their churchgoers.

Only a national census of church attendance would provide a definitive answer, and none has been held in England since 2005. Nevertheless, it is significant that Peter Brierley, the architect of that census and a former Director of Christian Research, is forecasting continuing decline. See our earlier news post at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/?p=319.

Another potential difficulty with Hewitt’s analysis is that she is dealing in absolute numbers, and not relative to the population, which is known to be increasing significantly through birth and immigration. So, church attendance figures which appear flat may actually still conceal relative contraction.

One way of detecting these relative movements is from sample surveys of the national population. Although they are known to exaggerate the actual extent of churchgoing, since (for various reasons) people tend to over-claim their religious beliefs and practices, they can still provide a guide to the direction of travel.

The medium-term trend from the British Election and BSA Surveys is decidedly downwards. However, in support of Hewitt’s thesis, it is interesting that, among those professing a religion, those claiming to attend religious services at least monthly were stable comparing 2005 and 2008.

The lessons of church history are also worth bearing in mind. Religious change can be an extremely slow and long-term process. This is not necessarily inconsistent with short-term (year-on-year) volatility in particular measures of religiosity. This is best illustrated historically in church membership statistics, originally tabulated by Robert Currie, Alan Gilbert and Lee Horsley, and now republished by BRIN at:

http://www.brin.ac.uk/figures/#ChurchesandChurchgoers.

In sum, there are lots of caveats to be considered when reading Hewitt’s blog. It is far from certain that a modern-day revival is just around the corner. The dragon of secularization is still not slain.

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Roman Catholics and the Latin Mass

Posted on September 6, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Yet another opinion poll has been published in the run-up to the state and pastoral visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Scotland and England between 16 and 19 September. But this one is different, since it is about the liturgical predilections of British Catholics and not about papal popularity!

It is one in a series of surveys commissioned by Paix Liturgique, a movement of Roman Catholic laity based in France and dedicated to the extraordinary form of the Latin Rite. Other national surveys have been conducted in France in 2001, 2006 and 2008, Italy in 2009, and Germany and Portugal in 2010.

The current Pope stated in a motu proprio of 2007 that the Mass can be celebrated both in its modern or ordinary form (i.e. in the vernacular, with the priest facing the congregation and Holy Communion received standing) and in its traditional or extraordinary form (i.e. in Latin and Gregorian chant, with the priest facing the altar and Holy Communion received kneeling).

The purpose of Paix Liturgique’s polling is to ascertain how far the Catholic laity is aware that the two forms of the Mass are permitted, and how much demand potentially there is for the extraordinary form, or Latin Mass.

Fieldwork in Britain was undertaken online by Harris Interactive France between 21 and 28 June 2010, among a sample of 6,153 adults aged 18 and over. From these were filtered 800 professing Roman Catholics.

Details of the poll are contained in a 10-page report from Harris, which can be downloaded from:

http://www.paixliturgique.fr/securefilesystem/FICHIERLISTE/FICHIERLISTE_20100903151657_harris_-_paix_liturgique_-_gb_juin2010.pdf

Paix Liturgique’s commentary on the survey can be found in its Lettre, 246 of 3 September, which has been translated into English and posted on the Protect the Pope website at:

http://protectthepope.com/?p=940

A short article about the poll also appears on the front page of the Catholic Herald of 3 September, which can be read at:

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2010/09/03/poll-almost-half-of-mass-goers-would-attend-older-form/

The following summary is derived from a combination of all the above, together with a two-page five-nation comparison of Paix Liturgique’s polling kindly supplied to BRIN by the organization’s press officer.

24% of Britain’s self-identifying Catholics claim to attend Mass weekly and 8% monthly, the combined figure of 32% being in excess of France and Portugal (19%) and Germany (10%), albeit lower than Italy (51%). The remaining British Catholics attend on holy days (10%) or occasionally (46%), with 12% never going to Mass.

39% of all Britain’s Catholics are aware that Mass can be celebrated in both the ordinary and extraordinary forms, which is less than in France, Germany and Italy. The other 61% do not realize this. However, among weekly and monthly Mass-goers awareness stands at 63%.

45% would consider it normal for both forms to be celebrated regularly in their own parishes (rising to 55% for weekly and monthly Mass-goers), with 21% regarding it as abnormal and 34% having no opinion.

Given the chance to attend Mass in the extraordinary form in Latin, but without it replacing the ordinary form in English, 16% of all Catholics say they would attend the traditional Mass weekly and 11% monthly.

When the same question was put to the regular (weekly or monthly) Mass-goers alone, 43% say they would attend the extraordinary form every week and 23% once a month. The combined figure of 66% is higher even than Italy, as well as far more than in France, Germany and Portugal.

Unsurprisingly, Paix Liturgique concludes that the poll is a ringing endorsement of its cause and emphatic proof of the ‘astounding deficiency’ of the British Roman Catholic hierarchies in promulgating knowledge of the motu proprio.

Paix Liturgique’s letter ends on an interesting methodological note. Because of the relatively small proportion of Catholics in Britain (13%), Harris had to poll a much larger number of adults than in Catholic countries. Consequently, at €10,000, this has been Paix Liturgique’s most expensive survey to date.

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Scotland and the Pope

Posted on August 30, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Pope Benedict XVI’s state and pastoral visit to Great Britain is almost upon us, and there remains much speculation in the national and international print, broadcast and online news media about the extent of opposition which he will encounter while he is in the country between 16 and 19 September.

However, according to an upbeat press release issued yesterday (29 August) by the Scottish Catholic Media Office (SCMO), whatever problems the Pope may face in England (he does not actually visit Wales), his time in Edinburgh and Glasgow on 16 September may be relatively trouble-free.

SCMO’s confidence derives from a poll which it commissioned from Opinion Research Business, among a representative sample of 1,007 Scots aged 18 and over interviewed on 7-9 June 2010, as well as from intelligence that the Protest the Pope campaign has abandoned plans for a big demonstration in Scotland.

The survey found that only 2% of Scots strongly objected to the papal visit with another 3% saying they objected. Six times as many (31%) claimed to be very or fairly favourable, which is about double the proportion who gave their current religion as Roman Catholic at the 2001 Scottish census. The remainder (63%) were neutral. So perhaps apathy rather than hostility is the main risk to the visit in Scotland.

Some commentators have suggested that the low level of opposition to the papal visit in Scotland is quite encouraging, considering the country’s history of sectarian strife. Tom Peterkin, Scottish Political Editor for Scotland on Sunday, took it as a sign in yesterday’s edition that ‘Scotland’s sectarian wounds appear to be healing’. However, he failed to note that fieldwork for SCMO’s survey was some three months ago, and a lot of water has passed under Catholic bridges since that time.

Two other religion-related questions were posed in the poll, presumably to be used in the cross-analysis of replies to the papal visit question. Unfortunately, the full data tabulations with breaks by these variables and standard demographics are not yet online.

The first of these additional questions was ‘Irrespective of whether you go to church, do you regard yourself as a Christian?’ In reply, 70% said yes, 5% more than gave their current religion as Christian in 2001. 26% did not consider themselves to be Christian and 2% affiliated to a non-Christian faith.

The second question concerned frequency of attendance at religious services, other than for rites of passage. 20% claimed to go once a week or more often, 26% once a month or more, 28% less often and 33% never. These figures seem improbably optimistic, even in relation to earlier opinion poll data and certainly compared with trends revealed by the Scottish church attendance censuses of 1984, 1994 and 2002. In 2002 11% of the Scottish population attended on census Sunday.

SCMO’s press release can be found at:

http://www.scmo.org/articles/poll-shows-opposition-to-the-papal-visit-evaporating.html

 

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Catholic Adoption

Posted on August 25, 2010 by Clive D. Field

On 19 August the Charity Commission announced its decision not to consent to the request from the charity Catholic Care to amend its charitable objects to restrict its adoption services to heterosexual prospective parents only. This followed a High Court judgment in March 2010 to allow an appeal by the charity against a decision of the Charity Tribunal made in June 2009, which had upheld the Commission’s earlier decision not to agree to a change of the charity’s objects.

The polling company YouGov has followed up this announcement with a straw poll among its own online panellists, a brief report on which was released on 24 August. See:

http://today.yougov.co.uk/life/stability-not-sexuality

The Commission’s verdict received much support from the 969 YouGov panellists who responded, with many arguing that ‘sexual orientation does not determine whether you are a good parent’. However, a significant minority did sympathize with Catholic Care’s desire to limit on religious grounds services which it provided to gay people. Some justified their view through their religious beliefs, while others felt that, in order to develop fully, children need both male and female ‘parents’. 

For a more scientific test of public opinion on the issue, we have to go back to the beginning of 2007 when the Equality Act had just made it illegal to refuse to place children for adoption with gay couples. Three more representative polls were conducted at that time. YouGov’s found Britons split on an exemption of Catholic adoption agencies from the rule (42% in favour and 43% against). Populus recorded a higher level of support (55%) for the exemption of church groups as a whole (Catholic ones not being specifically mentioned), while ICM found that 63% considered it wrong for the Government to stop Churches setting their own policies in this area.

None of these polls included breaks by religious affiliation. However, British Social Attitudes Survey data from 2008 demonstrate that negative attitudes to homosexuality correlate with strength of religiosity. Whereas 34% of British adults overall felt that homosexual sex was always or almost always wrong, the proportion was only 19% among the irreligious but 50% among the religious, with 35% for the intermediate category of ‘fuzzy faithful’. Interestingly, Roman Catholics (albeit many of them doubtless very nominal) were the least hostile towards homosexuality of all the principal religious groups (31%).

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Child Abuse and the Catholic Church

Posted on July 24, 2010 by Clive D. Field

There have already been a couple of BRIN news posts reporting British public attitudes to the sexual abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests and alleged cover-ups thereof. ‘Pope Benedict on the Back Foot’ (20 April) featured a YouGov poll undertaken on 12-14 April. ‘Ongoing Public Relations Problems for the Vatican’ (30 May) dealt with a Harris Interactive survey from 27 April to 4 May.

Now, buried among the pre-general election political opinion polls conducted by Populus for The Times, BRIN has unearthed three further questions touching on the abuse issue. They were put to a half-sample (of 742 adult Britons aged 18 and over) interviewed by telephone on 6 April 2010. The data tabulations, including breaks by demographics, will be found on pages 62-65 of the following document:

http://populuslimited.com/uploads/download_pdf-060410-The-Times-The-Times-Poll—April-2010.pdf

Asked whether the Catholic Church had responded appropriately to the evidence of abuse by some priests, 65% said that it had not, compared with just 20% who thought that it had handled the matter adequately. The number holding a negative view rose to 73% among those aged 45-64 and the AB social group (upper, professional and higher managerial classes) and to 76% for Liberal Democrats.

78% agreed that the Catholic Church should give a fuller and clearer apology to the children who were abused, against 14% who disagreed. Most in favour of a better apology were Scots (81%), the over-65s (82%), the ABs (83%) and Liberal Democrats (89%). 

Still more, 87%, were convinced that any senior figures in the Church who knew about the abuse of children by priests and helped to cover it up should resign. Only 6% disagreed. A figure of 90% was recorded for the 18-24s, the 45-54s and Midlanders, with 95% for Liberal Democrats.

Although none of the Populus questions specifically enmeshed the Pope, in striking contrast to the YouGov and Harris polls, there can be little doubt that next month’s papal visit to Britain will be overshadowed by the abuse scandal to some extent.

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Statistics of Catholic Religious Life

Posted on July 22, 2010 by Clive D. Field

The National Office for Vocation of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales has recently published the executive report and appendices for a study of Religious Life in England and Wales undertaken on behalf of the Compass Project, which is sponsored by a group of Roman Catholic Religious Orders and Congregations.

These documents contain some interesting new statistics about the ministry of vocations. They derive from a survey sent out this year to all 1,465 Roman Catholic religious houses in England and Wales. They represent 310 congregations of which 68% replied.

The report and appendices can be found at:

http://www.vocationevents.com/documents/ReligiousLifeExec.pdf

http://www.vocationevents.com/documents/Appendices1-3.pdf

For all the women’s congregations combined average annual entrants for the period 1999-2009 were 22, with a 60% average retention rate. For men’s congregations entrants numbered 14.5 each year, with 61% retention.

Only 3% of female and 8% of male religious were under 40 years of age, while 87% and 69% respectively were over 60. The latter figures included 49% of the women and 23% of the men who were over 80.

Both sets of data are disaggregated by vocations to contemplative and apostolic ministries, as well as by gender.

Appendix III contains a somewhat speculative calculation of the number of discerners, unmarried Catholics under 30 considering the possibility of a religious vocation, who went on to enter formation to the religious life.

From an objective standpoint, the statistics seem bleak, seemingly pointing to the eventual disappearance of the religious life in England and Wales. However, the tone of the report and associated press coverage (for example, Catholic Herald, 16 July) is far from being consistently downbeat.

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Authority and Governance in the Roman Catholic Church

Posted on June 22, 2010 by Clive D. Field

Roehampton University announced on 16 June that its Archives and Special Collections are now home to the ‘Roman Catholic Church in Great Britain, 1998–2002: The Queen’s Foundation Authority and Governance Archive’. The following post incorporates some edited extracts from the University’s press release as well as original material by BRIN.

Sponsored by Derwent (now Porticus UK) and established at the Queen’s Foundation for Ecumenical Theological Education in Birmingham, the Authority and Governance Project investigated the nature, exercise and experience of authority and governance within the Roman Catholic Church in England, Scotland and Wales. It was undertaken by an interdisciplinary group drawn from philosophy, theology, psychiatry, social welfare, and Church and business administration.

The project involved a series of conversations, interviews and conferences in which some 1,000 people from all walks of Catholic life, including laity, participated. Bishops, priests and seminarians were interviewed by NOP. The research was wide-ranging, encompassing controversial subjects that still face the Roman Catholic Church today, such as celibacy, the ordination of women and the sacramental involvement of divorced and remarried members of the Church.

Part of the project comprised a series of diocesan and parish case studies that looked at the local impact of governance and authority of the Church during periods of change or transition. Six (unnamed) dioceses were selected to form the basis of the research, four in England and two in Scotland, representing (according to multiple indicators) about one-fifth of the total strength of the Church in Great Britain.

The format of the parochial interviews with clergy and laity was conversational, with responses being generally recorded in note form, although there are also some taped interviews. The main areas investigated were:

  • the model of church as it operated locally in comparison to the official diocesan model
  • the engagement of the parish with diocesan structures and personnel and parish leadership
  • parish leadership, including lay participation and formation and mission

The archive is not yet fully catalogued, but there is a comprehensive box list. Access (by prior appointment) is subject to respect for the promises of anonymity which were given to individual respondents, dioceses and parishes involved in the research. For further information, contact archives@roehampton.ac.uk

Some of the findings from the project were reported in a series of books from several publishing houses in 2000-01. The content of these was mostly qualitative. However, some quantitative data did appear in Philip Grindell’s chapter on diocesan structures and resources in Diocesan Dispositions and Parish Voices in the Roman Catholic Church, editor: Noel Timms, Chelmsford: Matthew James Publishing, 2001, pp. 25-62.

Grindell even included a table which computed the estimated total value of the Catholic Church in Great Britain at that time. The figure he came up with was £2,259,000,000, of which 34% derived from general net assets, 32% from functional church properties, 28% from school properties, and 7% from works of art and other treasures.

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Ongoing Public Relations Problems for the Vatican

Posted on May 30, 2010 by Clive D. Field

There are fewer than four months to go to the papal visit to Britain, yet there appears to be no let-up in the public relations problems faced by the Vatican and Pope Benedict XVI, which we have already flagged up in our posts of 26 February (‘What do we think of the Pope?’), 15 March (‘Cyber warfare breaks out over the papal visit to Britain’) and 20 April (‘Pope Benedict on the back foot’).

That at least is the implication of two recent Harris Interactive online polls undertaken among representative samples of adults aged 16-64 in France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Spain and the United States. Fieldwork for the first survey was carried out between 31 March and 12 April for France 24 and RFI, with 1,030 Britons interviewed. Fieldwork for the second study (n = 1,124 in Britain) took place between 27 April and 4 May on behalf of the Financial Times (although the relevant questions do not seem to have been reported in that newspaper, as yet). Full data tabulations for both polls will be found at:

http://www.harrisinteractive.com/NewsRoom/HarrisPolls/FinancialTimes/DataTables.aspx

In the first survey the proportion of Britons having a very or somewhat good opinion of Benedict XVI stood at just 28%, the lowest figure in all six countries investigated save France (22%) and barely half the level recorded in Italy (52%). This was also the lowest statistic in Britain across the six waves of the world leader rankings carried out by Harris since November 2008, 13 points below the peak rating of 41% and a drop of 8% in under six months. 41% of Britons had a very or somewhat poor opinion of the Pope, with men (48%) and upper-income earners (53%) among his harshest critics.

Somewhat more Britons (42%) considered the Pope to have a great deal or some influence on the international stage than viewed him positively, but this was 9% less than in November 2009. It was also the lowest figure for the six countries apart from France (34%) and fell well short of Italy’s 70%. 31% thought the Pope had no or limited influence (37% for men and 41% for those in the upper-income bracket).

Asked to select from a list of six attributes potentially applicable to the Pope, only a minority of Britons described him as dynamic (19%) or charismatic (26%). Pluralities found him reassuring (44%), close to the people (45%) or honest (47%). But 80% regarded him as serious (second only to the US on 87%); this was presumably often viewed as a negative characteristic. Those who doubted the Pope’s honesty were especially located among the young and northerners.

Doubtless, the fall in papal ratings between November 2009 and the present owes much to renewed revelations about child sex abuse at the hands of Roman Catholic priests, including the apparent failings of the Vatican and national hierarchies to address paedophilia at the heart of the Church. This is the clear inference of the second Harris poll, which focused on allegations about child sex abuse by priests.

In Britain 81% of respondents were aware of these allegations (the same as in Germany but less than in the other four countries). Of these, 45% of Britons agreed that the Pope should resign immediately over the Vatican’s failings in these cases (the highest figure in the six nations apart from Spain), with 25% disagreeing and 29% unsure. Moreover, three-quarters of Britons who were aware of the allegations considered that the Catholic Church had lost its moral credibility over the child-abuse crisis, more than in any other country apart from Germany (81%).

A final question asked how often interviewees attended a place of worship. In Britain, the number of self-reporting non-attenders was 65% (including 72% of northerners and 71% of low-income earners), followed by Germany on 61%, France on 54%, Spain on 50%, the United States on 37% and Italy on 33%. Of Britons who still attended worship, 22% said they did so less frequently than five years previously and 21% more often.

So, the Britain which Pope Benedict XVI will be visiting in September is a country where religious practice is no longer the norm and one where the moral authority of both the Catholic Church and Papacy is being seriously questioned. Perhaps these considerations will impact upon the size of the crowds attending the papal events in England and Scotland. These are already under pressure on account of health and safety and security constraints which will limit the maximum potential numbers well below those that were possible during Pope John Paul II’s visit in 1982. It also remains to be seen whether the recent disclosures about the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s planning for the visit will result in some kind of sympathy vote among the public in favour of the Pope.

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