Conclusion

This chapter highlights the importance of revitalizing parish studies. Parishes occupy the embedded middle of American Catholicism. Parishes mediate between Catholicism as an aggregate of individuals and Catholicism as a global, hierarchical institution. Employing an embedded field approach, this chapter (and book) illuminates the meso level in sociological studies of Catholicism. Parishes are embedded in and are intimately shaped by social forces of community, geography, and authority. To say that parishes inhabit the middle of Catholicism is to recognize that parishes sit at the intersection of these (and many other) social forces. The chapter identifies three important lessons learned: (1) Seeing parishes sociologically means comparing assumptions with reality. (2) The sociology of parishes must work in conversation—and tension—with the study of congregations. (3) The sociology of parishes requires methodological breadth and strength. The chapter concludes by identifying next steps in a revitalized sociology of American parishes.

A Sociologist Looks at His Own Parish

This chapter is a dialogue with and reflection by John A. Coleman, S.J., a trained, well-published sociologist and Jesuit pastor in Northern California. In describing and exploring his own experience as a sociologist and pastor, he models the kind of inquiry raised by previous chapters, applying them in a practical way to a single parish to which the author belongs. Through lived experience and his bipartite role as sociologist and parish priest, Fr. Coleman shares in a personal way his own approach to the study of Catholic parishes. The chapter contains numerous questions and tools for applied sociological parish studies.

Introduction

This chapter highlights how community, geography, and authority intersect within parishes. It outlines an embedded field approach to parish studies, which recognizes the multiplicity of social forces that shape parishes. It also highlights the importance of exploring social processes as they occur within the meso-level of the parish. The chapter also describes the emergence of the book project and introduces the rest of the chapters.

The impact of the Clandestine Marriages Act: three case-studies in conformity

ABSTRACTThis article examines the extent of compliance with the Clandestine Marriages Act 1753 through three parish studies. It demonstrates that the vast majority of the sample cohort of parents whose children were baptized in church, and indeed of couples living together, had married in church as required by the 1753 Act, and shows how the proportion of marriages traced rises as more information about the parties becomes available. Through a study of settlement examinations, the article posits an explanation of why some marriages have not been traced, and argues that researchers should be cautious in inferring non-compliance from the absence of a record in a specific parish. It is also argued that the reason for such high rates of compliance has less to do with the power of statute and more to do with the fact that the 1753 Act was not such a radical break with the past as has been assumed.