Why is it that, in light of strong Church teachings on social justice, American Catholics are no more civic than members of other denominations? Based on an ongoing ethnographic study of Catholic parishes in the San Francisco Bay Area, this article addresses this question through a production of culture perspective. It contends that, by facilitating Catholic identities that are loosely defined and delimiting the prospects for extended discourse on social and political concerns, local parish cultures actually, and somewhat ironically, reduce parishioners ’ capacity for discerning the political and civic ramifications of their own Church ’s teachings.
French
Bien que l'Eglise leur dispense un enseignement fort dans le domaine de la justice sociale, l'auteur se demande pourquoi les catholiques américains ne sont pas plus civiques que les membres des autres confessions. C'est dans une perspective culturelle qu'il a approfondi cette question au cours d'une étude ethnographique des paroisses catholiques de la région de la Baie de San Francisco. Ses conclusions vont à l'encontre de ce que, parce qu'elles facilitent la définition d'identités catholiques vagues et qu'elles cadrent les questions sociales et politiques dans des perspectives à long terme, les cultures paroissiales diminueraient - ceci est dit avec une pointe d'ironie - la capacité des paroissiens à discerner les orientations politiques et civiles présentes dans les enseignements de leur Eglise.
Ammerman, Nancy T. (1997) “Golden Rule Christianity: Lived Religion in the American Mainstream”, in David D. Hall (ed.) Lived Religion in America: Toward a History of Practice. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press .
2.
Arendt, Hannah (1958) The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press .
3.
Bane, Mary Jo (2003) “The Catholic Puzzle: Parishes and Civic Life”, unpublished manuscript used with author ’s permission.
4.
Beckford, James A. (1989) Religion in Advanced Industrial Society. Boston, MA: Unwin Hyman .
5.
Berger, Peter L. (1967) The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion. Garden City, NY: Doubleday .
6.
Brown, Dorothy M. and McKeown, Elizabeth (1997) The Poor Belong to Us: Catholic Charities and American Welfare. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press .
7.
Burns, Gene (1993) The Frontiers of Catholicism: The Politics of Ideology in a Liberal World. Berkeley: University of California Press .
8.
Castelli, Jim and Gremillion, Joseph (1987) The Emerging Parish: The Notre Dame Study of Catholic Life Since Vatican II. San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row .
9.
Celio, Mary Beth (2001) Celebrating Catholic Parishes: A Study Done in Conjunction with the Cooperative Congregational Studies Project, Faith Communities Today (FACT) - A Preliminary Report on Roman Catholic Parishes. Seattle, WA: Catholic Archdiocese of Seattle .
10.
D ’Antonio, William V. , Davidson, James D. , Hoge, Dean R. and Meyer, Katherine (2001) American Catholics: Gender, Generation, and Commitment. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira .
11.
Davidson, James D. , Williams, Andrea S. , Lammanna, Richard A. , Stenftenagel, Jan , Maas Weiaert , Kathleen, Whalen , William J. and Wittberg, Patricia S. C. (1997) The Search for Common Ground: What Unites and Divides American Catholics. Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, Inc.
12.
Dillon, Michele (1999) Catholic Identity: Balancing Reason, Faith, and Power. New York: Cambridge University Press .
13.
Dolan, Jay P. (1985) The American Catholic Experience: A History of Colonial Times to the Present. Garden City, NY: Doubleday .
14.
Eliasoph, Nina (1998) Avoiding Politics: How Americans Produce Apathy in Everyday Life. New York: Cambridge University Press .
15.
Foucault, Michel (1980) “Afterword”, in Colin Gordon (ed.) Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977. New York: Pantheon Books .
16.
Froehle, Bryan T. and Gautier, Mary L. (2000) Catholicism USA: A Portrait of the Catholic Church in the United States. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books
17.
Garfinkel, Harold (1967) Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall .
18.
Geertz, Clifford (1973) “Religion as a Cultural System”, in C. Geertz The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books .
19.
Gergen, Kenneth J. (1991) The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life. New York: Basic Books .
20.
Giddens, Anthony (1984) The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Berkeley: University of California Press .
21.
Giddens, Anthony (1991) Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press .
22.
Greeley, Andrew M. (1981) The Irish Americans: The Rise to Money and Power. New York: Harper & Row .
23.
Hadaway, C. , Marler, Kirk , Long, Penny and Chaves, Mark (1993) “What the Polls Don ’t Show: A Closer Look at U.S. Church Attendance” , American Sociological Review58: 741-752 .
24.
Hewett, John P. (1989) Dilemmas of the American Self. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press .
25.
Hodgkinson, Virginia A. and Weitzman, Murray S. (1996) Giving and Volunteering in the United States. Washington, DC: Independent Sector .
26.
Hoge, Dean R. , Zech, Charles , McNamara, Patrick and Donahue, Michael J. (1996) Money Matters: Personal Giving in American Churches. Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press .
27.
Hoge, Dean R. , Zech, Charles , McNamara, Patrick and Donahue, Michael J. (1998) “The Value of Volunteers as Resources for Congregations” , Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion37(3): 470-480 .
28.
Janowitz, Morris (1967) The Community Press in an Urban Setting. Chicago: University of Chicago Press .
29.
Kanter, Rosabeth Moss (1972) Commitment and Community: Communes and Utopias in Sociological Perspective. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press .
30.
Kohut, Andrew , Green, John C. , Keeter, Scott and Toth, Robert C. (2000) The Diminishing Divide: Religion ’s Changing Role in American Politics. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press .
31.
Lamont, Michele (1992) Money, Morals, and Manners: The Culture of the French and the American Upper-Middle Class. Chicago: University of Chicago Press .
32.
Leege, David C. (1994) “The American Parish”, in Francis J. Butler (ed.) American Catholic Identity: Essays in an Age of Change. Kansas City, MO: Sheed & Ward .
33.
Marx, Karl(1978) The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, in Robert C. Tucker (ed.) The Marx-Engels Reader. New York: W. W. Norton .
34.
Morris, Charles R. (1997) American Catholic: The Saints and Sinners Who Built America ’s Most Powerful Church. New York: Vintage .
35.
Murnion, Philip J. and DeLambo, David (1999) Parishes and Parish Ministers: A Study of Parish Lay Ministry. New York: National Pastoral Life Center .
36.
Oates, Mary J. (1995) The Catholic Philanthropic Tradition in America. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press .
37.
O ’Brien, David J. and Shannon, Thomas A. , eds (1992) Catholic Social Thought: The Documentary Heritage. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books .
38.
Peterson, Richard A. , ed. (1976) The Production of Culture. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage .
39.
Prendergast, William B. (1999) The Catholic Voter in American Politics: The Passing of the Democratic Monolith. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press .
40.
Putnam, Robert D. (2000) Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon&Schuster .
41.
Roof, Wade Clark and McKinney, William (1987) American Mainline Religion: Its Changing Shape and Future. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press .
42.
Sewell, William H., Jr (1992) “A Theory of Structure: Duality, Agency, and Transformation” , American Journal of Sociology98 (July): 1-29 .
43.
Smith, Christian , Emerson, Michael , Gallagher, Sally , Kennedy, Paul and Sikkink, David (1998) American Evangelicalism: Embattled and Thriving. Chicago: University of Chicago Press .
44.
Tocqueville, Alexis de (1969) Democracy in America. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books .
45.
Tonnies, Ferdinand (1963) Community and Society, trans. Charles P. Loomis. New York: Harper & Row .
46.
Tropman, John E. (2002) The Catholic Ethic and the Spirit of Community. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press .
47.
Verba, Sidney , Schlozman, Kay Lehman and Brady, Henry E. (1995) Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press .
48.
Warner, R. Stephen (1993) “Work in Progress toward a New Paradigm for the Sociological Study of Religion in the United States” , American Journal of Sociology (March) 98: 1044-1093 .
49.
Wuthnow, Robert (1993) Christianity in the 21st Century: Reflections on the Challenges Ahead. New York: Oxford University Press .
50.
Wuthnow, Robert (1994) God and Mammon in America. New York: Free Press .
51.
Wuthnow, Robert (1998a) After Heaven: Spirituality in America Since the 1950s. Berkeley: University of California Press .
52.
Wuthnow, Robert (1998b) Loose Connections: Joining Together in America ’s Fragmented Communities. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press .
53.
Wuthnow, Robert (2002) “Beyond Quiet Influence? Possibilities for the Protestant Mainline”, in Robert Wuthnow and John H. Evans (eds) The Quiet Hand of God: Faith-Based Activism and the Public Role of Mainline Protestantism. Berkeley: University of California Press .
