The Influence of Priests on the Political Attitudes of Catholics.

This paper investigates the extent to which the political attitudes of Catholics are influenced by the messages they receive from their parish priests. I use data from the Notre Dame Study of Catholic Parish Life (which contains survey responses from pastors and more than 2,000 Catholic parishioners from 35 Catholic parishes from around the United States) to test a series of hypotheses related to clergy influence. The data indicate that liberal pastors have a significant, liberalizing influence on their parishioners? political ideology and opinions on a number of important sociopolitical issues, but that conservative pastors appear not to wield the same degree of influence. The findings of this paper shed new light on Catholic political attitudes and behavior, and provide new insight into the conditions under which religious leaders can be expected to exercise political influence over their flocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]