Civil Religion and Ethnic Americans

Abstract

My comments on ethnic Americans stem from a particular and specific frame of reference. First, I am a Catholic priest. Indeed, as another sociologist remarked (not intending a compliment): "He's nothing but a loudmouthed Irish priest." (May it be etched on my tombstonel) Still, these are my views, not the or even a "Catholic position." I very much doubt that there is a Catholic position on anything at this stage of the disorganization of the Roman Church. Secondly, I assay a tentative model, subject to empirical testing sometime in the future, about the "civil religion" of the Catholic ethnic. (I take it, by the way, that "ethnic" is merely a euphemism for "Catholic" when most people use it. Such does seem to me unfair to Scandinavians, German Protestants and even Anglo-Saxons, who, if The Christian Century is to be believed, are now ethnics too.)