Behaving and Belonging

Abstract

AbstractChapter 2 focuses on religious behaving and belonging. It emphasizes the primacy of religious practice for Catholics, the primary measures for which are Mass attendance, frequency of prayer, and regularity of Confession. For ‘belonging’ the analysis looks at the type of Mass most frequently attended (noting the wide liturgical diversity on offer within British Catholicism), and where they attend it (in their own parish or elsewhere), on the assumption that the specific worshipping community attended is a salient signal of certain subtypes of Catholic identity. The chapter presents new data on the social bondedness of British Catholics and show how this differs according to age and religious practice. It also discusses a significant youth effect within our data, in light of three possible explanations: survivorship bias, immigration, and a ‘creative minority’ effect.