The Harris Poll tracks "prestige" and ranks "priest/minister/clergy" at 41%. The Harris poll makes a point of explaining that to the American people, monetary reward is usually divorced from the concept of "prestige," which is why we see teachers and firefighters so highly regarded according to this poll.
The Lemoyne-Zogby poll however, since it is commissioned by the USCCB, consistently claims that American bishops are held in high regard by American Catholics, something we find very difficult to believe. But then again, they are reporting these findings to their employers who, let's face it, pay them to conduct said studies.
One always has to look at the questions asked. For example, in the most recent Lemoyne-Zogby poll, they gave respondants only two options, optimism or pessimism (and varying shades of optimism and pessimism), in their assessment of the Church's future. Common sense indicates, however, that when it comes to a great variety of topics, many people would not describe their attitude as either "optimistic" or "pessimistic," but often "neither" or "uncertain" or perhaps "wary." None of these were options, however. Any pollster knows that when you limit and control the respondants' options, you also control the results. In the worst of polls, you can ascertain your outcomes.
Options for self-identification were somewhat odd also. "Traditional" or "traditionalist" were not among the options, for example, but "born again" was. Have you ever met or heard of a "born again Catholic?" They also had "fundamentalist" and "evangelical" as options, but not "liberal," only "progressive."
More than ten percent of the respondants are not practicing Catholics in the sense that they go to mass less than once a month. Additionally,the number of people polled was small. Only 767 people identified as Catholic were polled, hardly a significant number of people, and who knows if the sample was representative since they give no indication of this on their site, nor do they share the margin of error or the poll results in a more raw form as in the Harris study. Based upon these facts alone, we would dismiss the Lemoyne-Zogby poll as nothing but propaganda for the USCCB.
Interestingly, the Catholic Register, a liberal publication, published an article back in September entitled, "Trust Evaporating: Poll Finds Clergy Trustworthiness Slips Preciptously." In the article they discuss Canadian Catholic findings, but also mention the above mentioned polls. A Fr. Clough stattes, "Who you don't know you don't trust," referring to the fact that the overall findings of the Canadian poll includes those who do not attend church. That seemed a little ironic to us, though, since in our own diocese it is, unfortunately, precisely those who we do know who we have come not to trust.
A Fr. Borean commented, "If I were bishop I would say, 'Gentlemen, you know we have something in front of us. We have to preach the gospel truly. When we do that there's no hidden interests, there's no personal agendas.'" Amen, Fr. Borean.
"Hypocrisy does not engender trust," said Father Clough. How true, how true.