Is the Catholic Church in America Experiencing Internal Secularization? Priests’ Assessments of Pope Francis and the Condition of the Church

AbstractThis study addressed internal secularization in the Catholic Church by testing the role of several factors in priests’ assessments of the state of the Church in the United States, priests’ views of whether the Church's situation is getting better or worse, and their attitudes toward Pope Francis. Comparisons with identical questions fielded in 2002 revealed a striking pessimistic turn among priests over the last two decades. In addition, regression analyses using the 2021 Survey of American Catholic Priests revealed that “in‐house” factors—namely, attitudes toward Pope Francis and perceptions of how well bishops have restored confidence in the Catholic Church following the sexual abuse crisis—most powerfully predicted priests’ current pessimism. On top of this, politically conservative priests and priests ordained more recently tended to be most critical of how Francis is handling his duties, signaling a pronounced tension inside the Catholic Church over religious authority, a defining feature of internal secularization.