Social and Religious Change in Four English Roman Catholic Parishes

Abstract

This paper reports some of the findings from a study of social and religious change with random samples of both Catholic and non-Catholic electors in four Roman Catholic parishes in England in the mid-1970s. The hypothesis that, as a result of the post-war expansion of educational provision in Britain, Catholics, with their largely urban, immigrant, working class origins, would have experienced a `mobility momentum' relative to the rest of the population, was not supported. Social mobility experiences were shown to be less important than parish effects on sexual morality and the stable middle class were less likely than other groups to defer to authority. The analysis of attitudes to contraception and to recent liturgical changes indicated that attitudes to religious authority were being transformed. There was little evidence that the shifts of religious ideology legitimated by the Second Vatican Council had any salience for Catholics generally.