National Survey Results: What We Learned About Latin Mass Attendees

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Man, those numbers for N O Mass attendees are absolutely staggering!!! 89% approval contraception? 51% approval abortion? 67% approval gay marriage? Again…staggering!!!
 
It’s pretty much a pointless study. It says exactly what everyone would expect it to say, but it shows no cause and effect. Everyone expects that those who attend the Latin mass are more serious than those that attend the NO mass. But all this really says is that those who sought out the Latin mass are serious about their faith. It doesn’t imply in any way that attending a Latin mass leads people to be more serious about their faith or leads them to participate in the sacramental life of the church more fully.
 
Likely the least scientific type of poll that could be conducted.
 
angel12 said:
1773 respondents. Out of how many millions of Catholics in the U.S.?
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Other samples show similar results. Many samples are conducted with a 95% certainty level or a standard deviation error of 2.5% on either side. I suppose you could deny the results of these samples, but statistically, provided the sampling is random, the probability that these results are too high is less than 2.5%. however, since other samples show similar results, the probability is much less than 2%.
Your best line of defense would be to encourage more Catholics to adhere to Church teachings, rather than doubt the results of several independent polls.
 
70 million Catholics in the US. But one of the non intuitive things about statistics is that the population size is not really that important - even if there were a billion Catholics in the US, a sample of a few thousand could be an accurate study
 
Nothing more than airbrushing statistics to elevate the EF Mass and denigrate the OF Mass, or a poor study.

First of all, correlation does not equal causation.

That said, there is a major flaw of omission or commission or the article is misrepresenting the data.

The article gives a list of topics showing the views of EF vs OF attendees; 98% of EF attendees to go Mass every Sunday, but only 22% of OF attendees.

Did they survey everyone at the OF Mass including only the sporadic attendees? Or did they survey the supposed only 22% that attend the OF every week? Because it would seem to me that someone who attends weekly Mass assiduously, whether the EF or OF, takes his or her faith fairly seriously. Moreover, for many if not most, attending the EF is simply physically impossible. For instance the nearest non-SSPX EF I can attend is 100 km away. Not going to happen for me at least.

So without comparing the statistics for that 22% attending the OF regularly against those who attend the EF regularly, the study is totally meaningless. It’s comparing apples and oranges.

It isn’t clear if the omission is a flaw in the study (deliberate or unintended) or an omission of the author of the article (again either deliberate or unintended). If it’s deliberate, it’s just another airbrush job to make statistics say what the agenda of the author says they should say. If it’s unintended, then it’s just terrible experimental design, or the author of the article simply missed this very important point.

Regardless of the intent, or lack of, it renders the study absolutely worthless.
 
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Funny thing statistics. Personal biases tend to weigh the reception of the information.

As to these results, I am not surprised in the least.
 
Yeah I noticed this problem too, if you are surveying NOM attendees then how did you find the 78% who don’t go to mass?

But looking closer at the table, the person conducting the study didn’t survey NOM attendees, they just used statistics from other sources. Presumably these other sources were just surveys of everyone who identifies as Catholic (which would even include TLM attendees, though there’s not enough of them to affect the data). This is obviously going to give different results than a survey that only looks at people in the pews
 
If you really want meaningful results then you should control for mass attendance. Only survey the people who attend at least every Sunday
 
Flopfoot said:
Yeah I noticed this problem too, if you are surveying NOM attendees then how did you find the 78% who don’t go to mass?
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In theory, a parish can do this calculation based on the number of “registered” people vs the average Mass attendance. Our parish it is around 30%. This does not account for visitors or the people who went to Mass at St Up The Road because the time fits better.
 
Another question I think would have been interesting is whether one thinks a woman can be a priest. Also political ideology…how many vote for liberal left democratic political ideology. Nine ‘Catholic’ senators voted for infanticide. I wonder what Mass they attend?
 
All it shows is that people who don’t regularly go to mass have different beliefs than those who do. It doesn’t show that people who regularly go to the NOM have different beliefs than those who regularly go to the TLM
 
According to the study referenced by this survey we’re discussing, 22%. Why do you ask?
 
Like, if you find the people who only go to the NOM on Christmas and Easter and you convince them to go to the TLM on Christmas and Easter instead, that’s not gonna change anything

Also with the statistic about income donation, can we assume that very little of the donations are coming from the people who don’t go to mass regularly? In which case the regular attendees are donating over 5% of their income, which is close to the number for the TLM
 
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