Studying Parishes

Abstract

While Catholic parishes are distinctive in culture and polity, they also share organizational characteristics with American congregations. Borrowing tools and concepts developed over the past thirty years in “congregational studies” can provide a useful resource to a revitalized study of American Catholic parishes and important comparative data on American religious life. This chapter argues that parishes can be better understood by paying attention both to the cultural toolkits parishioners bring from outside (ethnicity and social class, for example) and to the way they shape the larger tradition into their own local ways of doing things through their “artifacts,” “accounts,” and “activities.” In addition, the study of parishes can benefit from attention to the external social context and internal dynamics such as size, commitment, and power.