EWTN News portal reports on a study by the Institute for Family Studies claiming that “churchgoing Catholic couples” exhibit higher marital happiness and sexual satisfaction than their secular counterparts, based on data from the General Social Survey, CARA, YouGov, and Pew Research. The report, co-authored by Brad Wilcox and commissioned by the Novus Ordo organization FOCUS, frames faith and family as “antidotes to isolation” while admitting pervasive pornography use among religious men and lower marital happiness among large Catholic families due to insufficient “community support.” The study reduces the sacrament of matrimony to a metric of sociological well-being, entirely silent on the state of grace, the indissolubility of the bond before God, and the necessity of the traditional Mass and sacraments for supernatural fruitfulness.
The Naturalistic Reduction of the Sacrament to a Happiness Metric
The cited article trumpets that “79% of churchgoing Catholics and 74% of churchgoing Protestants are very happily married,” as if conjugal felicity were the telos of the sacrament instituted by Christ. This is the quintessential error of the conciliar age: the substitution of the supernatural end of matrimony—the procreation and education of children for heaven, the mutual sanctification of the spouses, the sacramentum fidei signifying the union of Christ and His Church—with a naturalistic calculus of emotional satisfaction and sexual frequency. Pope Pius XI, in Casti Connubii (1930), teaches with unmistakable clarity: “Matrimony was not instituted by man, but by God… Its laws, therefore, cannot be subject to the will of men, nor to any human power whatever, but only to the divine will and the power of God.” The study’s fixation on “sexual satisfaction” and “happiness” as primary indicators of marital success reveals a thoroughly Protestantized, utilitarian anthropology. It treats the sacrament as a therapeutic arrangement for temporal well-being, not as a vocation to carry the cross for eternal life.
The “Churchgoing” Category: A Sociological Fiction Masking Apostasy
The report speaks incessantly of “churchgoing Catholics” and “nominal Catholics,” yet never defines what constitutes the Church to which these persons go. In the current epoch, the visible structures occupying parishes and cathedrals are those of the conciliar sect, the ecclesia novae adventus, which since the usurpation of John XXIII has promulgated a false liturgy (the Novus Ordo Missae), a false ecclesiology (Lumen Gentium), and a false sacramental theology. The “Catholics” surveyed are, for the most part, attendees of the table of assembly that replaced the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary, recipients of an invalid “Eucharist” fabricated by “priests” ordained in the defective Paul VI rite, subject to “bishops” who are mere functionaries of the paramasonic structure headquartered in the Vatican. To call such persons “churchgoing Catholics” without qualification is a categorical lie. They are members of a false religion, externally simulating Catholicism while internally denying the Faith by their adherence to the antipope Leo XIV (Robert Prevost) and the entire line of usurpers since 1958. As St. Robert Bellarmine teaches: “A manifest heretic cannot be Pope… a non-Christian in no way can be Pope… he who is not a Christian is not a member of the Church.” (De Romano Pontifice, II, 30). The study measures the sociological habits of those inside the abomination of desolation, not the fruits of grace in the true Church.
Silence on the State of Grace: The Gravest Omission
Nowhere in the article—nor, by implication, in the study—is there a single mention of sanctifying grace, the state of grace, mortal sin, confession, or the last ends. The “happiness” of a couple living in habitual mortal sin (contraception, unnatural acts, pornography—which the study admits afflicts a quarter of “religious husbands”) is the happiness of the damned. Our Lord warns: “What doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul?” (Mt 16:26). A “happy marriage” that ends in double damnation is not a good; it is a diabolical parody of the sacrament. The Council of Trent anathematizes those who say the sacraments of the New Law are not necessary for salvation (Sess. VII, can. 4). The study’s silence on the necessity of the true sacraments—administered by valid ministers in the true Church—renders its conclusions not merely incomplete but theologically criminal. It offers opium to souls perishing in the conciliar sect.
The “Faith-Family Paradox” and the Demographic Collapse of the Conciliar Sect
Wilcox notes a “faith-family paradox” where “Catholic weddings falling by 74% since 1970” coexist with higher happiness among “believers who remain.” This collapse is the direct fruit of the conciliar revolution. The Novus Ordo liturgy, the demolition of the sanctuary, the abolition of the minor orders and subdiaconate, the introduction of communion in the hand, girls at the altar, and the hermeneutic of rupture have eviscerated the sense of the sacred, the priesthood, and the sacramentality of marriage. The 74% plummet in “Catholic weddings” is the statistical signature of apostasy. Those who “remain” in the conciliar structures are not “believers” in the Catholic sense; they are the residue of a false church that has lost the sensus fidei because it has lost the Faith. The study’s proposed remedy—”marriage formation for adolescents and young adults” and “family support at the parish level“—is the language of social work, not supernatural theology. It seeks to manage the decline of a false religion with better programming.
Pornography, Contraception, and the Conciliar “Magisterium”
The article admits: “Churchgoing husbands still view porn at similar rates to their secular counterparts.” This is the inevitable fruit of a “church” that has, since Humanae Vitae (1968), been torn asunder by episcopal dissent, where the “magisterium” of the antipope and his “bishops” has effectively capitulated to the contraceptive mentality. The Catechism of the Council of Trent teaches that the marriage debt must be rendered “with a view to the procreation of children, not for the gratification of lust.” The conciliar sect’s “theology of the body” (Wojtyła) and its “pastoral accompaniment” of the divorced and “remarried” (Bergoglio’s Amoris Laetitia) have obliterated the objective moral order. The study’s finding that “Catholics and Protestants who believe marriage is a permanent commitment are more likely to be sexually satisfied” is a sociological tautology: those who retain a natural law remnant of indissolubility fare better naturally. But without the supernatural bond, without the grace of the true sacrament, without the true Mass, this “permanence” is a naturalistic stoicism, not the sacramentum of Christ and the Church.
FOCUS and the “Alumni” Anomaly: Sectarian Recruitment Masquerading as Grace
The study compares the general “Catholic” sample with “1,219 respondents who were FOCUS alumni.” FOCUS (Fellowship of Catholic University Students) is a Novus Ordo parachurch organization dedicated to recruiting students into the conciliar sect’s “evangelization” model—emotionalist, programmatic, devoid of the traditional liturgy and the rigor of Thomistic formation. The report notes FOCUS alumni were “more likely to get married and to be happily married… while also less likely to be sexually satisfied than other Catholic couples.” This contradiction—higher marriage rates, lower sexual satisfaction—suggests a sectarian pressure to marry young within the movement, without the supernatural grace to sustain the sacrament. It is the phenomenon of enthusiasm without grace, characteristic of false religious movements since Montanism.
The “Large Family” Penalty: Exposing the Conciliar Sect’s Anti-Natalist Reality
The study finds that “Catholic parents of families of three or more children report lower marital happiness… because they don’t get enough support from their local church communities.” Only 46% report receiving “even ‘some help’.” This is the smoking gun. The conciliar sect, despite its rhetorical “pro-life” posture, is structurally anti-natalist. Its “parishes” are social service centers for the elderly and childless; its “priests” are bureaucrats managing decline; its “bishops” are careerists implementing the Agenda 2030 of the Masonic United Nations. The true Church, in her immemorial tradition, surrounds large families with the communio sanctorum, the Latin Mass, the catechism, the sodalities, the Opus Dei (Work of God) of the liturgy. The conciliar sect offers “programs” and “support groups“—the language of the NGO, not the Mater et Magistra.
Conclusion: The Study as Apologetic for the Abomination of Desolation
This report, published on the mouthpiece of the conciliar sect (EWTN), commissioned by its youth wing (FOCUS), authored by a sociologist (Wilcox) who operates entirely within the naturalist paradigm, serves one purpose: to legitimize the counterfeit church by pointing to its “better outcomes.” It is the argument of the Pharisee: “God, I give thee thanks that I am not as the rest of men.” (Lk 18:11). But the true measure is not “happiness” or “sexual satisfaction” but salus animarum. The “churchgoing Catholics” in this study are, objectively, outside the Ark of Salvation, worshipping at a false altar, led by false shepherds, deceived by a false pope. Their “happiness” is the peace of the cemetery. As Pius XI declared in Quas Primas: “Peace is only possible in the kingdom of Christ.” There is no kingdom of Christ in the conciliar sect. There is only the reign of Antichrist wearing the mitre of Peter. Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus.
Source:
Churchgoing Catholic couples trend the happiest, report finds (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 25.09.2026