I have some sad news–the Pastoral Planning Office of the Diocese of Cleveland has been closed. David DeLambo, a contributor to this blog and most recently the Associate Director of that Office, confirmed the news to me in a personal e-mail: Continue reading
I love it when reader comments add elegance and beauty to the conversation. Here’s a great example:
“Nice article. Sisters deserve so much respect for the sacrifices they have made in choosing this vocation. I always know for any crisis in life they have been there in prayer just a phone call away for me. I hope we never forget their importance in the catholic church; educators, nurses, doctors, missionaries, and even when they’re elderly they keep us lifted in prayer.”
This comment made me think of Sister Olga, my second grade teacher at St. Alphonsus Parish (the Church pictured above) and all of the other sisters who have been there and supported me throughout my life. Their impact is real.
Sorry, I’ve been away traveling and the blog has been relatively silent as a result. However, I am back and we should have posts up soon. I’m looking forward to a post (or two or three) discussing the LCWR situation from a sociological viewpoint. We are also hoping to have a post on school vouchers and their consequences for Catholic school enrollment, and much more this month. Finally, I’ve gotten some passionate comments from readers that I want to include in our conversation (along with responses), so look for all of that coming soon to The Catholic Conversation.
A reader responds with a critical but honest reaction:
“There are terms used in the blog that I find out of place for my experience. In the article about “liberal” Catholics and contraception, it frequently uses the term “liberal” in a pejorative manner. I find the word “liberal” does not fit. At one point, it states, “liberal Catholic elites” and then names two Catholics. Do you use terms like “conservative” or “conservative elites”? Even if you did, it would not add balance to it; rather, it would polarize it further. It would further adopt the elected-political terms into the life of the Church where I find they incite rather than bring understanding.” Continue reading
A few weeks ago, Carol Ann posted a graph of the Hispanic population in the U.S. in 1980 and 2000. Courtesy of Cliff Grammich with the Religious Congregations and Membership Study, we now have a graph showing Hispanic population growth from 2000 to 2010. Continue reading
In response to my post about Vatican II, someone noted the contrast with our current moment and described feeling like the Church is suffering collective deffervescence. (Perhaps I should call it de-effervescence, but I liked the neologism. So, I stole it for this post.)
Certainly, we live in challenging times for the Catholic Church, especially in the U.S. and places like Ireland. There is also no doubt that priest abuse scandals are the opposite of the Holy Spirit at work in the Church. Such things are sure to lead to increased feelings of disengagement and decline. But, I also think that there are positive forces at work in the Church as well, and it is important that we not lose sight of these positive forces for renewal. I guess I am less pessimistic than many when I look at the Church in the US today. I see so much good and know that evil cannot prevail! Continue reading
Carol Ann mentioned Melissa Wilde’s book on Vatican II, and I think it is a hugely important book in the Sociology of Religion, and one well worth exploring in more detail on this blog. Below is a short excerpt from my own part in an Authors Meets Critics Session for the book held almost 5 years ago:
“With Vatican II: A Sociological Analysis of Religious Change, Melissa Wilde has written a book that people will want to read, and it is a book that should be read. Writing in the kind of prose, that so many of us wish we could write but so few of us can, she outlines a simple, elegant argument for understanding why Vatican II changed some things and not others, and also why it changed anything at all.
Carol Ann identified several important questions that I want to explore in future posts.
For this post, I want to explore her insight regarding the underlying question for many of “why this issue now?” (a battle over contraception at a time of economic hardship for millions?) As she recognizes, it is not an either/or choice and certain Church leaders self-consciously speak out on both sets of issues. Furthermore, the selection of this particular issue at this particular time was driven by the creation of new rules by HHS administration.
But, still, this sentiment, which she identifies, helps us to think about and ask “Which issues (e.g., abortion vs. poverty) are discussed, debated, and focused on in the public arena and by whom?”
I have done research on this topic and my results suggest that Catholic identity politics are intimately connected to these distinctions. In my graphs for this post, I simply show which domain (and issue) is emphasized as “strongly connected to ultimate principles of right and wrong” according to self-identified religious identity.
It is clear that traditional Catholics are most likely to see cultural issues of abortion and same-sex marriage as moral issues, whereas liberal Catholics are most likely to see economic issues of health care and poverty as moral issues. This bifurcation in the moral worldview of Catholics helps us to understand current dynamics, but it also allows us to see the way in which the Catholic Church in the U.S. is fragmented. This is both understandable and potentially troubling.
Transcending (though not necessarily eliminating) such identity divisions will likely be an important task for the Church in the U.S. moving forward.
A little over a week ago, I presented the puzzle of liberal Catholics who disagree with the Church about contraception, but who felt betrayed when Obama enacted their contraceptive preferences into public policy. Gary recently weighed in on the debate and highlighted some deeper questions that need to be asked, but I also promised to provide my own solutions to this puzzle. So, here we go—I will begin with the simplest or most parsimonious explanation for liberal Catholics’ response:
Theory 1: Framing– Sociologists often emphasize the importance of framing in political discourse. Sometimes the notion of framing is seen as (or reduced to) a manipulation of meanings and situations. And, at times, there can be an element of truth to this. But the larger truth is that framing illustrates the role of context and history in shaping meaning, and a frame must be understand as the coming together of several different meaningful elements into a single whole.
Continue reading
The e-mail updates button on our sidebar has now been fixed.
If you would like to receive e-mails with the daily posts from The Catholic Conversation, just click on “e-mail updates” (on the right) and sign up.
The RSS is for people who use readers, such as Google Reader, and you can subscribe via most readers (no clicking of the button for RSS).
If you have any problems, please let us know!
Tomorrow, I will post our first contribution from Lucas Sharma, a graduate student at University of Loyola-Chicago. He will be suggesting how we might take a cultural sociology approach to liturgical studies. So, look for that.