The Personality Profile of Roman Catholic Parochial Secular Priests in England and Wales

Abstract

A sample of 1,168 Roman Catholic parochial secular priests in England and Wales completed the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire. In terms of the two major dimensions of extraversion and neuroticism the Roman Catholic priests display a personality profile more characteristic of women. In other words Roman Catholic priests are more introverted than men in general and more neurotic than men in general. In terms of the third major dimension ofpsychoticism, the Roman Catholic priests display a clearly masculine profile. Indeed Roman Catholic clergy are more toughminded than men in general A lthough a number of attempts have been made to apply the insights of personality theory to understanding and interpreting aspects of Christian ministry (Francis and Jones 1996; Malony and Hunt 1991; Malony 1995), the integration of such studies has been frustrated by the range of personality theories employed and by the difference in status accorded to those theories within the field of personality psychology itself (Matthews and Deary 1998). One concerted strand of research within England and Wales has, however, recently attempted to exploit the potential of Eysenck's dimensional model of personality (Eysenck and Eysenck 1985) among clergy of different denominational groups. The present study extends this strand of research to include Roman Catholic parochial secular priests in England and Wales. Catholic parochial ministry in England and Wales is carried out by two kinds of priests, one group called secular priests and the other group called regular priests. The term secular priests, derived from the Latin saeculum (world), was used originally to differentiate priests governed by a diocesan bishop and living 'in the world' from regular priests, derived from the Latin regulum (rule), who live in a monastic or communal life according to the rule of their religious order and who work at the direction of their religious supervisor rather than at the direction of a diocesan bishop. This study is concerned with neither Roman Catholic regular priests, nor with secular priests working outside the parochial structure. Eysenck's dimensional model of personality argues that individual differences can be most adequately and economically summarised in terms of three higher order factors, which he describes as extraversion-introversion (E), neuroticism-stability (N), and psy