Two out of three American Roman Catholics who attend Mass regularly say the nation's bishops have done a "bad job" facing the crisis of sexual misconduct by priests, and a more sweeping majority says each bishop should make a full disclosure of the scandal's financial costs, according to a new survey.
A Gallup poll that is the most detailed study of how the United States' most committed Catholics view the sexual abuse crisis suggests that parishioners across the nation worry that their donations to the church are being used for legal fees in abuse lawsuits or to pay hush money to victims. One in every five Catholics surveyed said the scandal had prompted them to stop donating to the local diocese.
"The bishops are heading for trouble if they think they can continue to run things like so many multimillionaire barons," said Francis J. Butler, president of Foundations and Donors Interested in Catholic Activities, the association of Catholic philanthropists that commissioned the survey. "Parishioners won't tolerate that anymore."
Mr. Butler's group gave a copy of the poll to The New York Times yesterday and planned to deliver the results of the survey to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops today.
Although about 65 million Americans identify themselves as Catholics, many rarely attend Mass. The survey was administered to 1,001 Catholic households during the first three weeks of October. Its results were drawn from the responses of 656 parishioners who said they attended Mass once or almost once a week, and therefore appeared to represent the church's bedrock faithful. Three-quarters of those Catholics said they spent several hours a week on parish activities.
The Archdiocese of Boston and a handful of other dioceses have acknowledged that they face financial problems because of reduced giving and the mushrooming costs of abuse lawsuits, and many Catholics are concerned that the scandal has plunged the nationwide church into financial crisis. A recent article in the Jesuit magazine America examined how bishops might use bankruptcy laws to advantage.
Yet because diocesan finances are kept secret by many bishops, data on how the crisis has affected parishioners' donations has been unavailable until now.
In the survey, about one in nine of the regular Mass-goers said they had been putting less money in their parish collection plate in the months since the abuse scandal began in January. About 3 percent of Catholics — mostly more affluent and conservative parishioners — reported increasing their parish giving.
The nation's 194 dioceses have been harder hit: 19 percent of those surveyed said they stopped supporting their diocese, with some saying they were diverting those donations to other Catholic causes.
Charles E. Zech, a Villanova University economics professor who prepared the questionnaire and analyzed the survey results, said in an interview that he was surprised at the consensus among the most faithful Catholics that bishops should be required to make a full report on how much they have spent to respond to sexual abuse allegations. Seventy-nine percent of those surveyed called for such a report.
Foundations and Donors, whose member groups and philanthropists give the American church $200 million a year, asked the bishops' conference this year to hire an independent auditing firm to prepare a diocese-by-diocese report on how much the bishops have spent to respond to abuse cases.
One influential prelate, Cardinal William Keeler of Baltimore, responded to the request by reporting last month that his archdiocese had spent $5.6 million over 20 years on settlements, counseling and other expenses related to abuse cases.
But most bishops, who under church law have virtually complete discretion over diocesan finances, have ignored the call for more accountability, and several bishops criticized Cardinal Keeler for revealing financial information, Mr. Butler said.
"There's a fortress mentality at work in many dioceses," he said.
The bishops refused to consider the request by Foundations and Donors for a national financial report at their semiannual meeting, which begins Monday in Washington, Mr. Butler said.
Most of the questions in the Gallup survey focused on parishioners' attitudes about bishops' accountability, especially on financial matters, but one was very broad: "Do you think the U.S. Catholic bishops have done a good job or a bad job in dealing with the problem of sexual abuse of young people by Catholic priests?"
"A bad job," said 64 percent of those surveyed.