I think it's more the point that these are the expectations that the Church has of Catholics - if someone doesn't do them, then they can hardly call themselves practising Catholics.
And when a Catholic stops being a practising Catholic? When he/she doesn't go to church every single Sunday? And what if one goes to church when he/she has time or strength to do so? What if someone is attending mass once a month or only now and then? Or what if someone goes to church only on Christmas, Easter, weddings and funerals? Where is this line which one has to cross to stop being a practising Catholic? Is a person who doesn't go to church every Sunday, but observes Christmas and Easter, prays, fasts and supports the Church still a practising Catholic or not? And what if a person does go to Church every Sunday but doesn't fast, doesn't go to confession and doesn't support the Church? A practising Catholic or not?
There are all kins of levels of practising and Polonius3 was right when he wrote that in Polish there's a distinction between "wierzący" (believer) and "głęboko wierzący" (deep believer or a devout person in English, I guess?).
Delph, if someone has Catholic parents and was baptised but later on doesn't consider himself/herself a Catholic then he/she will answer that he/she isn't a Catholic. Believe me, Poles have no problems with doing so :) That's how I would understand such question and that's how other Poles would understand it, I think. People in Poland don't say they are Catholics only because they were baptised.
Of course, there's also probably this strange type of a Catholic, who doesn't really believe in God but consider himself/herself a Catholic and maybe even follows some traditions because, well, that's the Polish tradition in his/her mind and that's that. But I don't know what survey would reveal their numbers :) Maybe there should be two questions: "What religion are you?" and "Do you believe in God?"
Why not? It would certainly help with understanding Poland more
Sure, right :) That's not why Harry made this thread.
I would be very interested in detailed statistics too, particularly if they proved that the RCC in Poland is not dominated by the type of people that Polonius and other extremists claim it is.
And what is this type of people and how such surveys would prove that?