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Is The Roman Catholic Prohibition Of Female Priests Sexist?: How Catholic College Students Think About Women’S Ordination And Sexism, Michael Maher Jr, Linda M. Sever, Shaun Pichler

Education: School of Education Faculty Publications and Other Works

In April 2003, the researchers conducted a survey of undergraduate students living in residence halls at Loyola University Chicago. The majority of Catholic students in the study expressed disagreement with the statement, “Women should not be allowed to be clergy (priests, pastors, imams, rabbis, etc.),” and the majority of them expressed agreement with the statement, “Sexism is wrong.” This was not a surprise to the researchers. What was surprising was the fact that the correlation of the responses by Catholics between these two statements was insignificant (r = -.089). The researches explored this question with focus groups made up …