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I keep seeing the point made that Jacob Rees-Mogg's opinions on abortion are the orthodox Catholic view and there are 5.7m Catholics in UK.
This is an example of a common mistake, which is to take a religion's orthodox teaching and associate it with all the self-avowed adherents.
This is absolute bollocks. It's bollocks in general, but it's bollocks on stilts in a secular country with freedom of religion like the UK.
If the Catholic church restricted itself to the people who actually agreed with the catechism, then it wouldn't have 5.7m adherents.
It wouldn't even have the million-odd that actually go to the churches on a Sunday. It would have a few tens of thousands.
You'll see the alt right insisting that all Muslims agree with some awful sentence they've yanked out of a bad Hadith.
But even when something is the official position of a religious organisation, that doesn't mean that the ordinary members agree with it.
So, you can't call on the ordinary members of a faith to argue that the official position of that faith have mass support.
After all, they don't get a vote. The official positions are generally decided by a self-perpetuating oligarchy.
If you want to argue that x million Catholics agree with something, then you need to show that they actually do.
PS Catholics are in favour of gay marriage. Whenever they've had a vote, more have voted for than against, look at Ireland, for example.
The official Roman Catholic church is against, but the majority of Catholics are in favour.
On abortion, 7/10 UK Catholics are pro-choice. ind.pn/2wOlOVr In cases of rape, or threat to the mother's life, 7%.
So the majority Catholic position in the UK: pro-choice, pro-gay-marriage. It is Jacob Rees-Mogg who is unusual for a Catholic.
For someone like me, an atheist with atheist parents, who has almost never been to a church service, it's easy to get the wrong idea.
It's easy to think that the only reason anyone has a religion is that they have a deep faith in every line of belief.
It's easy to imagine that all Catholics know the catechism and believe in every line - because that's the only way I'd become a Catholic.
It's also wrong. The vast majority of Catholics are so because their parents were. They don't reach their moral opinions by catechism.
They have the same sorts of opinions as anyone else. That's why 70% are pro-choice.
A *majority* of *religious* Catholics favour gay marriage. bit.ly/2wOoMt5 Yes, really. Not of the 5.7m tick-box Catholics
But of the million or so who are religious (average Sunday attendance is about 1.2m, knock off those getting kids into school).
The position of the official leadership is assumed by both those who agree and by outsiders who disagree to be the position of the members.
Both are wrong. And the people who disagree with the leaders are not "bad Catholics". They're just as Catholic as the ones who agree.
The Catholic position on abortion is pro-choice. The Catholic position on gay marriage is it should be legal.
It's the Pope who is the non-standard Catholic.
Just to clarify this tweet, 70% are generally pro-choice. Only 7% are hard-line anti-abortion (inc rape and life of mother).
My source didn't list don't knows, which means I can't say 93% think abortion is OK for rape/life of mother, just that only 7% are against.
