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39% of Americans expect Vatican to accept homosexuality within 30 years

By 44pc to 32pc, Pope's new family statement seen as defeat for traditionalists

50pc expect Catholic Church to always oppose abortion

Only 37pc think Vatican will retain its criticisms of homosexuality

Tim Montgomerie

10 April 2016

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Ross Douthat, in his Sunday column for the New York Times, is clear that the new Papal statement – “On Love in the Family” – gives “the post-1960s separation between doctrine and pastoral practice… a papal imprimatur, rather than being a state of affairs that popes were merely tolerating for the sake of unity”.

And 44% of the panelists assembled for YouGov’s First Verdict seem to agree that the Pope’s intervention does amount to a licence for a more liberal Catholicism. 32% of Panel members did, however, interpret the new settlement as a victory for moral traditionalists;

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We also asked the Panel if they thought the Catholic Church would change its fundamental teachings on homosexuality and abortion.

50% thought the Church would never change its teaching on the status of what 54% of Americans think is best described as a foetus but which anti-abortion campaigners and Catholic doctrine regards as an “unborn child”;

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Americans were more expectant of a change of teaching from the Vatican on homosexuality. 39% expected acceptance within the next thirty years – more than the 37% who expected that opposition to the LGBT movement would remain;