Rome, Italy - Nearly 90% of Italians call themselves Catholics, but more than two-thirds favour legal recognition for unmarried couples despite opposition from the Church, according to a study sociologists say is evidence that Italians tailor their religion to
fit their lifestyles.
The survey released this week by the Rome-based research institute Eurispes also found that 78% of Italian Catholics believe people who are divorced and remarry should not be forbidden to receive Communion. The poll also revealed that a mere one-third attend Mass at least once a week. Catholics are expected to go to Mass every Sunday.
"It's tailor-made religion," Domenico De Masi, a sociologist at Rome's La Sapienza university, said on Thursday. "We take from the pope whatever suits us. The parts that are outrageous get taken out."
De Masi cited, as an example, the Church's ban on sex before marriage, which he said is widely and openly disregarded among his students, even the ones who profess themselves to be Catholic.
"Catholicism is very prohibitionist, and therefore a person has to create her own beliefs; otherwise it's impossible," said Virginia Liberini (22) a student in Rome who said she is a Catholic.
She cited the Church's ban on condoms.
"It's counterproductive, even on a sanitary level," added Liberini, who is not a student of De Masi's.
The study polled 1 070 Italians between December 22 and January 5 and did not include a margin of error.
As for abortion, which has been legal in Italy since 1978, 83% of Italians who described themselves as Catholics (and 84% of all those polled) are in favour of it when the mother's life is in danger.
About 73% of Catholics favour abortion when the foetus appears to be malformed, and 62% approve of it in the case of rape, according to the survey.
"At no time in history has there been such a strong split between what people want and what the Church wants," De Masi said.
However, the approval rate for abortion decreases sharply when women have abortions for economic reasons (26%), or when women just don't want to have children (22%.)
Statistics show that Italy's abortion rates have dropped steadily over the years. In 2004, 136 715 women in Italy had an abortion, compared with 234 801 in 1982. There are about 58-million people in Italy.
The Catholic Church suffered a blow when Italians upheld the abortion law in a referendum in 1981. But in recent years, the Church has started speaking out against abortion again, turning it into an election issue for the first time in at least 20 years.
While no mainstream parties advocate making it illegal again, both left-and right-wing parties have supported giving cash benefits to women during pregnancy or after birth -- widely seen as a way of encouraging women not to have abortions.
The Church also has been a severe critic of proposals to give legal status to unmarried couples, and the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano has denounced efforts to pursue the proposals as "provocations".
However, the study found that 71% of Italians are in favour of it.
Elisa Bevilacqua, a 23-year-old medical student, said she is a Catholic who goes to Mass "most of the time," and is in favour of abortion and legal rights for unmarried couples.
"I believe very much in the Christian message, which I think is based on love and forgiveness," Bevilacqua said. "I don't think this clashes with being in favour of abortion."