Religiousness and students’ intimate life

Sounding research conducted in 1988 among the students of the University of Łódź shows that there is a marked dependence of religiousness upon attitudes of ones intimate life. The dependence is clearly visible when we compare the two extreme categories i.e. regularly practising Catholics (attending services every Sunday) and non-practising persons. In the group of devout Catholics merely 2 per cent of students have ever been on the verge of comitting a suicide while in case of non-practising persons over 20 per cent. Practising Catholics enter their sexual life later; every second person has never had a sexual intercourse before (51% females and 41% males). In the case of persons who do not go to church these figures are much lower i.e. only 16 per cent have never had a sexual intercourse (18 per cent females and 14 per cent males). A vast majority of informants was of the opinion that abortion was inadmissible. However, only church-goings are definitely against abortion, wchich is the effect of the anti-abortion campaign led by the Roman-Catholic Church in Poland, while non-practisinq persons do not share this view. Non-practising informants smoke, drink alcohol and want to emigrate from Poland more frequently than the practising Catholics, do 8 per cent of practising and 36 per cent of non-practising students smoke habitually, while three thirds of the former and a half of the latter are non-smokers