Correcting a Mistake: Univision Poll of Catholics re: Issues of Sexual Ethics Is a Global Poll, Not Just a Latin American One

I made a mistake several days ago, and want to let you all know about it--and to correct the misinformation I posted. On Sunday, I mentioned briefly a recent poll conducted by the U.S. Spanish-language network Univision. I discussed the poll in the context of discussing a Washington Post article by Michelle Boorstein and Peyton M. Craighill about the disconnect between official Catholic teaching about sexual ethical issues, and what Catholics actually believe about those issues.

My mistake: I somehow had the idea that the Univision poll results applied solely to Latin American Catholics. I now realize that I misread what Boorstein and Craighill reported about this poll. As Patricia Miller reports today at Religion Dispatches, the Univision poll is a global survey that polled Catholics in twelve countries around the world.

And so when the poll finds that 70% of Catholics surveyed oppose same-sex marriage, it includes results from Uganda (99% of Catholics oppose marriage equality) to the U.S. (60% of Catholics support marriage equality). My summary of the results mistakenly indicated that these findings were for Latin American Catholics.

I apologize for my sloppy reading of the Boorstein-Craighill article, and for this mistake. And I do want to correct it, now that I understand the poll results better than I did on Sunday.

The graphic is from a posting at the Gay Recluse site about a stencil the blog found in Vienna in 2009, which uses the Pippi Longstocking figure of Astrid Lindgren's book. I love that it pops up when one asks Google's image search to suggest graphics for the phrase "mea culpa."