Patterns in the Survival of Catholic National Parishes, 1940-1980

Abstract

National parishes represent the primary institutional response of the Catholic Church to its ethnic diversity in the United States. The national parish differs from the more common territorial parish in the definition of its membership, which comprises all Catholics in an area sharing a specific ethnic or national background. This study examines patterns in the survival of German, Italian and Polish national parishes between 1940 and 1980. Factors related to characteristics of a parish's institutional environment and of the ethnic community it serves have strongly influenced parish survival. These factors include the parish's ethnic affiliation, the size of the ethnic community it serves, the diversity of national parishes present at the local and diocesan level and the process of parish consolidation in places where an ethnic group has formed more than one parish. Through the effects of these factors, national parishes have declined at a much faster rate in the Middle West than in the Northeast, regions in which the vast majority of national parishes were originally established. Catholic ethnic diversity should thus continue to contribute most significantly to American cultural pluralism within the latter region.