Parish and Place: Making Room for Diversity in the American Catholic Church

ISBN-13: 9780190270322 / Angielski / Miękka / 2017 / 264 str.

Tricia Colleen Bruce

Opis

The Catholic Church stands at the forefront of an emergent majority-minority America. Parish and Place tells the story of how America's largest religion is responding at the local level to unprecedented cultural, racial, linguistic, ideological, and political diversification. Specifically, it explores bishops' use of personal parishes - parishes formally established not on the basis of territory, but purpose. Today's personal parishes serve an array of Catholics drawn together by shared identities and preferences, rather than shared neighborhoods. They allow Catholic leaders to act upon the perceived need for named, specialist organizations alongside the more common territorial parish that serves all in its midst.

Parish and Place documents the American Catholic Church's movement away from "national" parishes and towards personal parishes as a renewed organizational form. Tricia Bruce uses in-depth interviews and national survey data to examine the rise and rationale behind new parishes for the Traditional Latin Mass, for Vietnamese Catholics, for tourists, and more. Featuring insights from bishops, priests, and diocesan leaders throughout the United States, this book offers a rare view of institutional decision making from the top. Parish and Place demonstrates structural responses to diversity, exploring just how far fragmentation can go before it challenges unity.

Recenzje

The work of Parish and Place opens up a door for important further pastoral and ecclesiological investigation. In these fragmented times, it is genuinely difficult to discern how best to support people and communities across differences while also building inclusive communities. Bruce's study provides valuable information and interpretative frameworks for continuing conversations about how best to deal productively with diversity and fragmentation within the Catholic Church. Readers interested in the promise and problems involved in personal parishes will be provoked to think more deeply and critically about these important issues.

O autorze

Tricia C. Bruce is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Maryville College whose books include Faithful Revolution and Polarization in the US Catholic Church. She received her PhD in Sociology from the University of California Santa Barbara, and has conducted research for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.