"Half of Catholic respondents said they wanted the church to become more progressive," according to Beliefnet, "while 28 percent said the church is 'fine as it is,' and the rest favored a return to more traditional Catholicism."

By contrast, among more than 6,000 non-Catholic respondents, 80 percent believed Catholic priests should be allowed to marry, and 58 percent said the church should ordain women, while 64.5 percent said the church should be more progressive.

Three-quarters of all the respondents surveyed in both groups were women.

Pope Benedict has stated his unequivocal positions on the issues of greatest concern, offering detailed arguments for celibacy, for male-only priesthood and for holding the line against secularism, among other issues.

In his book "Salt of the Earth" he identified selfishness and a crisis of faith as two of the underlying challenges individual Catholics — and Christians in general — must face.

"I would say that people don't want to do without religion, but they want it only to give, not to make its own demands on man," he wrote. "People want to take the mysterious element in religion but spare themselves the effort of faith. The diverse forms of this new religion, of its religiosity and its philosophy, all largely converge today under the heading 'New Age.'

"A sort of mystical union with the divine ground of the world is the goal to which various techniques are supposed to lead. So there is the idea that it is possible to experience religion in its highest form and at the same time to remain completely within the scientific picture of the world. In contrast to this, the Christian faith seems complicated."

For Americans worried that domestic politics are becoming increasingly saturated with the language of faith, Pope Benedict's election raises new questions about how Rome will play into the evangelical backlash that handed President Bush a second term in office.

While evangelicals disagree with him on basic issues including the new pope's insistence that "the church of Christ . . . continues to exist fully only in the Catholic Church" and that Protestant churches "suffer from defects," they found a friend in Pope John Paul II's fearless lead in shoring up traditional Christian morality on social issues. Most observers believe they — along with top LDS leaders — are counting on Pope Benedict to further that agenda.

The spokesman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops lauded the new pope's selection in a prepared statement, but factions within the American church have already been vocal about what they want to see from the new pontiff.