The study, based on a common European questionnaire, compares values in Croatia and 32 European countries in religion and morality, society and politics, marriage and family life, gender roles, labour and spare time, sexuality and education.
On the one hand, Croats show a high degree of denomination (88.8 pct), which is not the case in Western, Central and Eastern European countries, while on the other, the influence of religion and the Church on individual segments of everyday activity and behaviour is far smaller than the Catholic denomination would suggest and is different in its intensity than elsewhere in Europe.
In Croatia 11.1 per cent of the public is without denomination as against 24 per cent in Western European countries, 37 per cent in Central European, and 39.7 per cent in Eastern European countries.
Baloban said that as many as 93.7 per cent of Croatians wish to have a religious rite to accompany a marriage or a death, whereas in Europe the figures are 70.1 per cent for births and 78.5 per cent for deaths.
He said that 86.1 per cent of Croatians, as against 83.5 per cent of Europeans, maintains that a child needs a father and a mother to grow up happy. As many as 65.2 per cent of Croatians (41.3 pct of Europeans) approves of a single mother having a child without a stable relationship with a man or a family life with the father.
A 1998 survey called "Religion and Morality in Croatia" showed that 80.6 per cent of Croatians considered abortion murder, although as many as 64.4 per cent said women should have the possibility to decide whether to abort or not.
The latest comparative survey shows that 87.3 per cent of Croats do not see marriage as an obsolete institution, 78.4 per cent consider the family very important and 20.3 per cent important in a person's life, 76.3 per cent think that a person needs to have children to give his/her life meaning, and 98.4 per cent think that children are important for a successful marriage (89.9 pct in Europe).
It transpires from the survey that the family is one of the fundamental backbones of the development of Croatian society, Baloban said, adding that the public rightfully wants the family to be among political, social, educational, social and other priorities.
The comparative survey, covering the 1999-2005 period, was conducted by the Catholic Faculty of Divinity.