Report No. 4 RELIGIOUS VALUES and PARISH PARTICIPATION
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NOTRE DAME STUDY OF CATHOLIC PARISH LIFE University of Notre Dame 1201 Hesburgh Library Notre Dame, IN 46556 Report No. 4 RELIGIOUS VALUES AND PARISH PARTICIPATION: THE PARADOX OF INDIVIDUAL NEEDS IN A COMMUNITARIAN CHURCH by David C. Leege and Thomas A. Trozzolo OUTLINE OF CONTENTS The Parish: Order and Religious Diversity Core Catholics: The Subjects of Study Parish-Like Communities Expectations of the Parish: "What is a parish supposed to be?" Models of the Parish Parish Purposes and Parish Activities Parish Purposes and Religious Practices Parish Purposes and Parish Priorities Foundational Religious Beliefs The Parish: Order and Religious Diversity This is the second of two reports to address participation in religious rites and parish activities. The previous report examined social factors and presented findings about differences in participation associated with social location and stage in the life cycle. The present report examines religious factors. It looks at questions ranging from how Catholics define the purpose of their parish, to their perception of the most fundamental problems in human life for which religion offers answers, to the religious practices parishioners prefer. It explores how normative definitions of parish, foundational beliefs, and specialization in religious practices affect the range of parish activities in which Catholics participate, their reasons for attending Mass, their degree of satisfaction with the parish, and their sense of parish priorities. A religious sect normally takes a narrow definition of the "one way' the essential belief or religious practice. An ecclesia, a church, normally seeks to sanctify a range of religious practices and experiences through a broad corpus of doctrine. Historically the Roman Catholic Church has thought of itself as a church rather than a sect. It should come as no surprise, then, that at the level of the local parish, different foundational beliefs, preferred religious practices, and expectations of the local church exist side-by-side. Using a broad definition of ecumenism, one could argue that the local parish is the most ecumenical organization existing. Not only are its people different sociologically but they bring very different religious needs and experiences to the same gathering. Studying the local parish, one is constantly reminded of the tension that exists within any church — between the need for order, for boundaries on acceptable beliefs and behaviors, and the recognition that Jesus and the Holy Spirit redeem and sanctify life in many forms. Badgered by demands from the church at Jerusalem that he conform to their definitions of proper doctrine and practice, the apostle Paul said: "I have become all things to all men for the sake of the Gospel" Nearly 2,000 years later our parish data remind us of that enduring tension. Core Catholics: The Subjects Study Previous reports in our series have taken pains to elaborate the kinds of samples used in the Notre Dame Study of Catholic Parish Life. Our research design has purposely focused on the parish as a living body, and on different kinds of individuals — pastors, staff, volunteer leaders, and ordinary parishioners — within the parish; by definition, these were people with parish connections. When we wanted to generalize to all adult Catholics in the United States, even those lacking parish connections, we have often had recourse to the General Social Surveys (GSS) collected by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) of the University of Chicago. Especially we made extensive use of GSS data in Report 2, which profiled U.S. Catholics in the 1980s, and in Report 3, which offered generalizations about participation both by all Catholics and by core Catholics. Because succeeding reports will focus increasingly on the sample we have heretofore called "core Catholics" it is important to know more about these people and how they differ from adult Catholics as a whole. Ours is a parish-connected sample. Not all adult Catholics have parish connections. Among those adults who would identify themselves as "Catholics" in a general population survey, we estimate that between l/4 and l/3 attend Mass very sporadically if at all, or, if they attend Mass more regularly, they float from parish to parish. They are not likely to be in our sample, either because they do not appear on parish records or because they have no interest in responding to a study of parish life. Whether those lacking parish connections should be considered Catholics in the full sense differs in the judgments of social scientists and church leaders. In fact, the toughest research design questions in a project like ours concern: "Who is a Catholic?" and "What kinds of Catholics have we reached?" A research task force of the Pastoral Planning Conference is at work on the first question; they will do all researchers dealing with the Catholic Church a tremendous service if they can devise an operational definition of a Catholic. Certainly answers to this question abound. Some would argue for a canonical definition — any adult who is baptized and/or confirmed a Catholic. Others would insist on regular or periodic communion. Others would say anyone who was raised "culturally" in a Catholic family or setting, no matter how distant from the Sacraments and parish life that person now is. For a time, people used the term "nuclear Catholics" to describe those who were sacramentally-active and parish-connected. But then others said that it was a loaded term, because Church leaders would view nuclear Catholics as the true Catholics and would fail to listen to, minister to, or care about the marginal Catholic, who either for church policy or personal reasons had drifted away from sacramental life or parish connections. We are certainly aware that our term "core Catholic" could be misused, depending on one's policy agenda for the Church. We would welcome a term for our respondents that does not mislead or lend itself to misuse. One of the best ways to protect against misuse is to compare our "core Catholic" parishioners with the broadest possible definition of a Catholic. The GSS asks for denominational affiliation; the person's self-classification — Catholic — is probably the most inclusive research-based definition of a Catholic. Our Parish Life Study, on the other hand, started with quite up-to-date parish census rolls in the 36 parishes. We sampled randomly from these lists and achieved a 59% response rate. In some respects we have a more exclusive definition of Catholic because a person had to have some connection to a parish to appear on the lists. But it is less exclusive than one would guess. Parishes differ in their own definitions of "membership" For some the definition is canonical; for others, it is anyone regularly served, sacramentally or programmatically, by the parish. In our urban Black parishes, for example, the pastors indicated that between 15% and 40% of the adult members were not sacramentally confirmed Catholics. In other parishes a non-Catholic spouse who regularly participated with his/her family in parish rites was treated as a "member;" pastors felt that the option of keeping the family worshiping together in the same local faith community was preferable to the split in the family that would occur if the spouse went off to his/her own Baptist or Lutheran services. Not surprisingly, about 2% of our "core Catholics" are not Catholics canonically, but are served — sometimes sacramentally — on a regular basis by a parish. The proportion is not large, but it is fair to say that these are "registered parishioners" and their behavior approximates that of "core Catholics" Pastors know about these people and, like St. Paul, they work out their own timetable in ministering to them. At the same time, over 6% of those carried on the census rolls of a parish who responded to our survey are rarely worshiping in the parish of their registration; they regularly worship at another parish. By a strict definition of "registered parishioner" these people could no longer be treated as members of the parish of their registration. Yet they certainly are part of the core Catholic population and we treated them as such. So, a simple issue of what is a core Catholic becomes a complex issue because of differences in local practices and behavior. In the first instance, our Study was even more inclusive than GSS; in the second instance we were just as inclusive. But for those who are not registered at all in a parish, we are more exclusive; they have eluded either our sampling or our response net. We can only make informed guesses what proportion of these parish-unconnected Catholics are active or estranged by comparing some of the characteristics of our sample with the GSS data. In general, our respondents are older, more likely to be female, and somewhat more "conservative" on church issues than are the GSS respondents. The average age of adult Catholics on GSS for the years 1982-84 is 42.6 years. The average age of our Study respondents for the same time period is 49.3 years. The GSS data show that 57% of adult Catholics are women, but 62% of our Study respondents are women. On GSS, 63% of the regular attenders are women, while on our own Study 61% of the regular Mass attenders are women. Our parish-connected respondents are far more likely to be regular attenders than are Catholics in GSS's sample of the U.S. adult population; 85% of our respondents attend Mass 2-3 times a month or more, while only 55% of Catholics in the GSS sample attend that frequently. It is noteworthy that both sample groups have virtually identical proportions of spouses who are not Catholics, 20% and 19%.