WelCom December 2021
A new survey of US priests has found younger clergy tend to be more conservative than their elders on many issues. ‘We find strong empirical confirmation of the nearly ubiquitous perception that younger priests are more orthodox in their beliefs than older priests,’ the authors state in the abstract. ‘Additionally, we find a significant turn toward pessimism regarding the current state and trajectory of the Church.’ The 2021 Survey of American Catholic Priests (SACP) was released by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin and Baylor University.