New Research Reveals Greater Belief of Jesus' Presence in the Eucharist Among Nearly 70% of Catholics
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A recent study revealed that Catholic belief in the Real Presence may be higher than previous data discovered -- but measuring that belief accurately is difficult task for researchers.
Regular Mass attendance, however, is here used as a key factor in evaluating an person's belief in the Real Presence.
On June 3, Vinea Research, a Maryland-based research firm focusing on the Catholic Church in the U.S., released "Do Catholics Truly Believe in the Real Presence?" -- which revealed that 69% of Mass-going Catholics believe in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. Higher levels of belief correlated with more frequent Mass attendance.
Vinea's seven-page report examined a landmark 2019 survey by Pew Research that found only 31% of Catholics in the U.S. believed that "during Catholic Mass, the bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Jesus."
While 69% represents the percent of all U.S. Mass-going Catholics in our study who believe in the Real Presence, that result not surprisingly varies by Mass attendance levels. The more frequently someone attends Mass, the more likely they are to believe in the Real Presence .
Interestingly, nearly two-thirds (64%) of Catholics who attend Mass only a few times per year believe
in the Real Presence, as do approximately half of those who attend Mass even less frequently. We
have a couple observations considering these results:
• The upward trend in belief in the Real Presence by Mass attendance frequency is indicative of
strong correlation between those two data points. The more someone believes, the more likely that
person will want to receive the Eucharist, and the more regularly that person will go to Mass.
• However, the questions, as worded, do not measure strength or conviction of belief in the Real
Presence. We would suspect that frequent Mass-goers believe in the Real Presence more fervently
than less frequent Mass-goers and that conviction of belief is even more strongly correlated with
Mass attendance.
• Fundamentally, though, our view is that a simple two-option survey question is suboptimal as an
approach to assessing belief in the Real Presence. It can provide a snapshot, but a very imperfect
one.
Concluding Thoughts June 2024
1 Pew asked a complex question in a dichotomous way, providing only two options. We do not believe this is how you gauge belief in the Real Presence. At a minimum, you need to ask about belief and conviction of belief. But even that is likely insufficient; many other questions should be considered: Do they believe it enough to find a Mass when traveling? Do they frequently go to confession? What is the root cause of their belief, lack of belief, or doubt? The answer to these question are found in a study, not in two questions.
2 Clearly, how a question is worded matters greatly and affects the results of whatever you are measuring. In this case, we believe we demonstrated how Pew’s wording may have greatly underestimated the percent of Catholics who believe in the Real Presence. While we developed what we feel is a better question, the complex nature of the question leads us to believe the real answer is somewhere between Pew’s results and ours.
3 The good news is that a large percentage of Catholics, even those who do not go to Mass frequently, express some level of belief in the Real Presence. While their level of belief is not sufficient to have them attend Mass more regularly, this represents a connection – albeit by a thread – that will hopefully lead to future stronger belief through evangelization efforts and prayer.
4 Importantly, we should not lose sight of the fact that the Pew study demonstrated that Catholics struggle with their belief in transubstantiation. When faced with the choice between an unfamiliar term (“actually become”) and the bread and wine as symbols, many still chose the latter option. To truly understand Catholics’ belief in the Real Presence, further study – including qualitative and quantitative research – is warranted.
5 We do not believe Pew Research Center had any negative intentions when they sought to measure Catholics’ belief in the Real Presence. However, the study design, results, and subsequent effects demonstrate the need for Catholic strategic researchers, such as Vinea Research – who know how to design research, interpret the results, and apply the results through a Catholic lens – as the ones to provide Catholic information and insights.
Approach and Limitations
In late 2022, we were getting ready to field a survey to assess Catholics’ familiarity and belief in different parts of the
kerygma. In that study we were planning to have over 2,000 respondents, which is a robust sample. We split that
sample in two and had one half of the sample (1,138 survey respondents) answer the Pew version of the questions
and the other half (1,121 respondents) answer Vinea’s versions of the questions. We then weighted our sample to
match the U.S. population on the basis of sex, age, ethnicity, education level, children under the age of 18, and
frequency of Mass attendance using Harvard’s Cooperative Election Study Common Content from 2022, a nationally
representative sample of 60,000 American adults.
†
Pew’s sampling approach with the ATP, referred to as probability sampling, is the gold standard method for
obtaining a representative set of survey respondents. Given resource constraints, and because our focus was more
on comparing question structure versus projecting results to a larger population, we worked with a consumer panel
company, ThinkNow. While this approach allows us to make direct comparisons of our two research arms, we
cannot conduct a truly direct comparison to Pew’s findings given the different sampling approaches. However, the
magnitude of of difference in results does allow us to make inferences between the two approaches
Implications
Many Catholic leaders rightly responded to Pew Research Center’s findings with great concern because of the
implications of the results and the centrality of the Eucharist to our Catholic faith. While updating the results with
more accurately worded questions should not diminish the value of having greater emphasis on the Eucharist, it is
always best to work with accurate information.
The experiment we conducted should serve as a reminder of the importance of language use and question
structure when measuring Catholic beliefs, especially when working with non-Catholic organizations who may not
recognize the importance of subtle wording changes (e.g., praying “with” the saints vs. “through” the saints vs. “to”
the saints).
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