CSPRI’s major research report on the Catholic giving gap in the U.S. is now finished.  You can read the full report and find out why religious giving among American Catholics lags behind that of almost all other faiths in the U.S.  Even more importantly, you can find out what our research suggests are the best ways for promoting generosity in Catholic parishes.  The report is also accessible from CSPRI’s home page at http://cspri.nd.edu.

In the weeks and months ahead, I will be publishing additional short “online analyses” here at the Catholic Conversation.  For instance, I will explore differences in likelihood and levels of giving depending on Americans reported approach to giving (e.g., giving spontaneously, giving what they can afford at the time, giving a weekly amount, or giving a percentage of one’s income).  I will also explore differences in giving among self-identified traditional, moderate, and liberal Catholics and examine explanations for why any such differences exist.  If you have a question regarding the topic of religious and charitable giving, please ask it via “comments” and I will see if I can incorporate your questions into my future posts in some way, shape, or form.

Happy Thanksgiving!

In 1 Corinthians 13:13, Paul offers an oft-cited message about the relation between what are commonly referred to as the theological virtues: “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”  Of the three encyclicals Pope Benedict XVI has written since the beginning of his papacy, two have dealt with theological virtues.  As is evident from their titles, Deus Caritas Est (God is Love) in 2006 and Spe Salvi (Saved in Hope) in 2007 explored the virtues of love and hope, respectively, while the Pope’s 2009 “social” encyclical, Caritas in Veritae (Charity in Truth), is deeply informed by his previous reflections on these two theological virtues. Continue reading →

The ICL just finished hosting a conference exploring Modern Christian Martyrs entitled, “The Seed of the Church.”  The conference was outstanding with many excellent talks and engaging questions and discussion.  It was especially striking to attend the conference while much of the rest of the U.S. was focused on the presidential election as this conference sought to bring greater awareness to an issue that is so often overlooked today, especially by U.S. politicians and American Catholics. Continue reading →

Sarah Moran recently summarized research by Mike McCallion, Ben Bennett-Carpenter, and David Maines on the New Evangelization in the Archdiocese of Detroit.

Now, the Catholic Conversation has given Sarah the opportunity to share her critiques of this article and Mike and Ben have posted responses here and here.

I love substantive back and forth that actually clarifies discussion.  Enjoy the debate!

Thanks to Sarah Moran for the excellent write-up about our article and also the thoughtful and challenging reply.  I’d like to follow up Mike’s comments here with a brief response to Sarah’s appreciation/critique of the article.  As a brief word of background, I tend to come at these discussions with a focus on the rhetorical considerations, with some sensitivity to issues of affect and practice.  Briefly put, I pay special attention to how words are being used in particular contexts.  With that in mind, I want to highlight the terms “traditional,” “the Church”, “individual” / “community”, and “New Evangelization.” Continue reading →

I would like to thank Sarah for her interest in our article on NE and Vatican II Catholics and for writing a thoughtful and respectful response to it.

First, I want to say something non-scientific or at least something that sounds non-academic (although Durkheim, Turner, Bellah, Rawls, Rosati and many others who appreciate the findings in the sociology of emotions and ritual practices might disagree that what I am about to write is non-academic) that the difference we outline between NE and Vatican II Catholics is basically affective or emotional for those involved.  Indeed, it was explicitly stated by one Vatican II professional we interviewed when he/she said simply, “I just get a different feeling from them” (that is NE professionals – see p. 298).  I say this because Sarah is partly right in saying NE professionals have a communal orientation and some Vatican II professionals have an individualistic orientation.  However, I think our data (admittedly it is qualitative and cannot be used to generalize to the church at large and, granted, we did not describe our methodology other than in footnote 2) supports the Vatican II professional’s response “I just get a different feeling from them.”  We admitted in our article that each type has similar characteristics as the other but when speaking, when teaching, when conversing with each other they are clearly different because you just get a different “feel” from each.  We said this to ourselves several times during the research process and wrote “there is a palpable difference” between them in the article.  There is something going on, “I can feel it.” Continue reading →

Many thanks to Mike McCallion, Benjamin Bennet-Carpenter, and David Maines for their relevant research on the New Evangelization (NE).  The NE is a topic of special interest to me, having received much of my faith formation and education in the Archdiocese of Denver, an archdiocese that closely aligns itself with the NE mission.  This close alignment of missions is tangible throughout the diocese, most explicitly by the renaming of the center which houses the Archdiocese of Denver’s two seminaries and the majority of its offices to The John Paul II Center for the New Evangelization after the visit of the Pope John Paul II to Denver for World Youth Day in 1993.  The diocese’s website describes this center as being “on the frontlines of the Church’s modern ‘crusade’ for the ‘New Evangelization.”

In Denver, I interacted with several influential NE organizations, both formally, as an employee of one, and informally, through various archdiocesan events.  These organizations include the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS) and the Augustine Institute, both founded and based in the archdiocese, as well as active communities representing many of the lay ecclesial movements which McCallion et al. describe as key NE agents, including the Neo-Catechumenal Way, Opus Dei, and Communion and Liberation.  To a large extent, my experience of the NE in Denver resonates with McCallion et al’s description that the “NE is a thoroughgoing effort to reconstitute the primary social dynamics both inside and outside the Catholic Church within global society.”  Yet when the authors present the conflicting rhetorics of NE and Vatican II ministry professionals in the Archdiocese of Detroit, much of my experience of NE professionals’ rhetoric differs. Continue reading →

Since I linked to Marian’s San Damiano program yesterday, I figured I should show a clip from the ICL’s very own ND Vision today.  If folks know of (or are connected to) other great programs like these and especially if you know of short videos showcasing them that I could link to, please feel free to e-mail me and I will make posts like this a continuing feature.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X40keRhXZo&list=PL9652C0C1AC45B0A3&index=1&feature=plpp_video

There are not enough great programs for forming our youths into faith-filled adults, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t many great ones out there.  It just means that there are still not enough.

Since Marian University is on my mind.  Here is a video from one of those excellent programs–the Sam Damiano Scholars at Marian University.  Keep up the good work, Mark!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5SwEjBSkW8&feature=plcp

 

 

Review Essay on:  Lee, Bernard J. and D’Antonio, William V. et al.  2000.  The Catholic Experience of Small Christian Communities. New   York: Paulist Press.

Lee and D’Antonio et al’s book was the first national study of small Christian communities (SCCs), documenting their growing number and importance.  These facts alone should interest Church leaders and social scientists, but especially those involved in small Christian communities and evangelization.  Through a rather comprehensive multi-method approach, the authors provide both a descriptive statistical account of SCCs, semi-rich qualitative data via interviews with SCC members, and participant observation of actual SCC activity.  Given that others have reviewed these data however (CARA, 2000 and Gautier, 2002), this review will concentrate only on Bernard Lee’s critique of SCCs found in chapter five – “Perspectives and Portents: Theological Interpretations and Pastoral Recommendations.”  First, I question Lee’s notion that SCCs are functional equivalents of monasteries for containing religious virtuosi, suggesting this analogy is inadequate in that SCCs function more like Wuthnow’s special purpose groups (SPGs).  Secondly, I claim that Lee’s “wanting more” from SCCs is sociologically naïve and indicative of the seemingly ever constant and growing attitudinal and behavioral gap between professional ministers and ordinary laity. Continue reading →