U.S. Catholics Mostly Accepting of Non-Traditional Families

The American Catholics who will meet Pope Francis on his U.S. visit later this month are widely accepting of non-traditional families, according to a Pew survey out Wednesday.

While 90 percent of U.S. Catholics said that a household headed by a married mother and father -- traditionally supported by the Catholic Church -- is ideal for raising children, large majorities see single, unmarried and divorced parents as acceptable.

Sixty-six percent said that gay parents can do an acceptable job of raising children, including forty-three percent who considered the arrangement as good as any other.

A large majority -- 83 percent -- saw as acceptable for children to be raised by parents who are living together but not married, including 48 percent who considered it just as good as any other arrangement.

Roughly four in 10 U.S. Catholics (38 percent) said it is acceptable or just as good as any other arrangement for single parents to raise children, with 31 percent saying the same about divorced parents.

The results, found in a Pew survey of 5,122 adults conducted May 5-June 7, also found that 86 percent saw it as acceptable for a man and a woman to live together as a couple outside of marriage.

Among those, 55 percent considered that lifestyle as good as any other.

About 70 percent said that a married husband and wife who choose not to have children have a lifestyle that is as good as any other.

Less than half of U.S. Catholics saw homosexuality, cohabitation with a romantic partner outside marriage and contraception as sins -- 44 percent, 33 percent and 17 percent respectively.

And 76 percent said that the Catholic Church should allow the use of contraceptives, and 46 percent supported the Church changing its views to recognize gay marriages.

The Church has traditionally frowned upon any family arrangement outside of a male-female marriage with children.

Positions however harden among the roughly 40 percent of U.S. Catholics who say they attend Mass weekly.

Among this group, only 34 percent say it is as acceptable and as good as other options for a gay couple to raise children. That compares to 49 percent of Catholics who attend Mass less than once a week.

- Soft on climate change - 

Francis will have a hard time convincing his U.S. flock about the need to fight against climate change.

Less than a third -- 29 percent -- say that working to counter climate change is essential to their Catholic identity, while 62 percent see helping the poor as key.

Forty-one percent say that spending money on luxuries without helping out the poor is sinful, but only 23 percent say it is sinful to use energy with no concern for its impact on the environment.

The survey, which included 1,016 self-identified Catholics, has a 3.5 percent margin of error for Catholics, and a 1.6 percent margin of error for the full sample.

Francis has a tight schedule during his September 22-28 U.S. visit, which features stops in New York, Washington and Philadelphia.

Before flying back to Rome, Francis will visit the Vatican-sponsored World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.