1.  The Gallup Poll has found that 41.6% of Americans say they go to church at least once a week or almost every week. 

 
This was slightly higher than the 40.9% from the previous year.
 
The 12 states with the highest church attendance and the percent of weekly worshipers are:
 
Mississippi 63%
Alabama 58%
South Carolina 56%
Louisiana 56%
Utah 56%
Tennessee 54%
Arkansas 53%
North Carolina 53%
Georgia 51%
Texas 50%
Oklahoma 49%
North Dakota 49%
 
The 12 states with the lowest church attendance and percent of weekly worshipers are:
 
Vermont 23%
New Hampshire 26%
Maine 27%
Massachusetts 29%
Nevada 30%
Hawaii 31%
Oregon 31%
Alaska 31%
Washington 32%
Rhode Island 32%
Connecticut 32%
Wyoming 34%
 
Correlating church attendance with elections, the 12 states with the highest church attendance have 18 Republican senators and 6 Democratic senators.
 
The 12 states with the lowest church attendance have 8 Republican senators and 16 Democratic senators.
 
 
2.  Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, who is a member of the Pontifical Council for the Family, the Pontifical Academy for Life, and the Supreme Court of the Apostolic Signature, said that politicians who support homosexual marriages cannot be considered to be Catholic.
 
“It’s impossible to consider oneself a Catholic if that person in one way or another recognizes same-sex marriage as a right,” Caffarra said in a note, Marriage and Homosexual Unions.
 
Reporting from Vatican City, Carol Glatz of Catholic News Service wrote that Franciscan Father Maurizio Faggioni, a staff member of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), pointed out that the issue is not new and was addressed in the 2003 document, “Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons.”
 
Then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who at the time headed up the CDF, wrote that “all Catholics are obliged to oppose the legal recognition of homosexual unions,” and that “When legislation in favour of the recognition of homosexual unions is proposed for the first time in a legislative assembly, the Catholic law-maker has a moral duty to express his opposition clearly and publicly and to vote against it. To vote in favour of a law so harmful to the common good is gravely immoral.”
 
Pope John Paul II approved the statement and ordered it published.
 
“When legislation in favour of the recognition of homosexual unions is already in force, the Catholic politician must oppose it in the ways that are possible for him and make his opposition known; it is his duty to witness to the truth,” Ratzinger wrote.