One of the endlessly mind-numbing things about public opinion polls (especially when they’re churned through the meat grinder of daily journalism) is how you can have separately asked questions, the answers to which completely contradict each other.
So for instance, you have this lead paragraph in an article now running at CNN …
A majority of U.S. Catholics surveyed want the next pope to have a theological outlook similar to that of Pope John Paul II, but they would also like to see changes on issues such as birth control, stem cell research and allowing priests to marry, according to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll released Sunday.
As the article notes further down into the piece …
Seventy-eight percent said the next pope should allow Catholics to use birth control, 63 percent said he should let priests marry and 59 percent said the next pope should have a less-strict policy on stem cell research.
Needless to say, a Pope who followed <$NoAd$> any of those suggestions, let alone all of them, would be one who had a very different outlook from John Paul II.
