On the Reproduction of Segmentation: Divergences in Catholic Church Professional and Laity Views of Church Size

Abstract

We discuss the widely recognized segmentation between church professionals and laity, and then use that segmentation framework to interpret survey data on potential solutions to Catholic priest shortages. In particular, we report that church professionals tend to envision building larger churches as a viable solution, while laity are much less inclined to think so. We theorize these findings in terms of how the Catholic Church has reproduced segmentation between professionals and laity in a Vatican II era marked by an ethos of church democratization. ignificant processes of segmentation between religious professionals (paid parish staff)1 and ordinary parishioners continue to challenge and problematize the ideals of the Catholic parish community. In many of the controversies, a kind of battle has been waged between simple lay/folk/ethnic Catholics and paid professional church elites. Indeed, some portrayals have been polemical and overly drawn, such as Wilhelmsen describing the professionals as "educated prigs who have rejected their own lower-middle class origins" (1967: 12), or Hitchcock's characterization of the two groups as "an elitist middle-class element revolting against the authoritarian hierarchy above, and the ignorant mass below" (1971: 107). While not going to those extremes, we agree that such an attitudinal and behavioral gap exists and that processes of segmentation continue to be manifested between many educated paid church professionals and ordinary pew-dwelling Catholics. And these processes of segmentation have continued in the Catholic Church since Vatican II even though Vatican II supposedly implemented more democratic ecclesial processes. We turn briefly to this social and ecclesial context before discussing the larger literature on the religious lay/professional attitudinal gap. The shift from Vatican I to Vatican II involved a process of democratization within the Catholic Church, even though the official power structure of the Roman Church remained stable. For example, Vatican II promulgated the theology of the People of God as well as the concept of episcopal collegiality, both of which were democratizing ideas. Moreover, the many ecumenical statements of the Council suggested more cooperative and democratic ways of relating to other Christian and non-Christian bodies. Specifically, the promotion of lay ministry was perhaps the most democratizing movement of all that followed in the wake of Vatican II. The irony, however, is that as lay people were formally trained to take on these new ministries, more bureaucracy and stratification entered the church. These lay