Adopting a Loosely Coupled Catholic Identity

• In Event: 165 - Section on Sociology of Religion Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 13. Religious Change: Micro, Meso, and Macro

Abstract

How do Catholic converts reconcile their disagreements with Church teachings? In Catholic Identity (1999), Michele Dillon investigates how marginalized Catholics who are pro-change nevertheless forge a coherent identity. Dillon finds that rather than compartmentalizing competing identities (as in Greeley 1977; Hout and Greeley 1987), pro-change Catholics merge these identities by strategically employing doctrinal rhetoric to encourage change within the Church. Based on six months of ethnographic observation of a Catholic conversion class and 21 interviews, I find that Catholic converts do not strategically employ Church doctrine to advocate change, nor do they compartmentalize divergent beliefs. Instead, I draw up microsociological theories of interaction to extend organizational “loose coupling” literature (e.g. Meyer and Rowan 1977) to show that in the conversion classroom, my subjects avoid conflict, absorb blame, or defer control upwards by relying on hierarchy.

Author

• Rachel Ellis, University of Pennsylvania