American Catholic Sociological Society Research Articles

The Sacred, Religion, and Morality

The Sacred, Religion, and Morality Romanus Cessario OP (bio) During the period that standard English-speaking authors refer to as that of modern continental philosophy, the trio of the "sacred," "religion," and "morality" became subjects of research in disciplines that developed out of or alongside classical theology and philosophy. The argument of the first half of this paper is that by and large this innovation has not been a fortuitous one for Catholic thought. For instance, it is generally agreed that August Comte (1798–1857) played a key role in the initial transformation of "religion" into what may be described as a Time-magazine sphere of society, that is, alongside the economy, politics, sports, theater, and so forth. His 1852 Catechism of Positivism supplied the founding charter for the discipline that has come to be known as the Sociology of Religion. This work, moreover, along with Comte's other writings influenced in a broad sense the development of modern sociology. Although born into a devout Catholic family, Isidore Auguste Marie François Xavier Comte's own views on religion reflect the intellectual uncertainties of his period. He subtitles his Catechism a "Summary Exposition of the Universal Religion, in Eleven Dialogues between a Woman and a Positivist Priest of Humanity."1 It [End Page 16] should be evident that August Comte does not escape the skepticism and confusion with respect to religion that infected certain French authors during the first half of the nineteenth century. Even Friedrich Nietzsche was moved to remark on the strained ambiguity that, in his caustic opinion, was characteristic of figures like Comte and Ernest Renan: "How strangely devout for our taste even these recent French sceptics are, to the extent they have some Celtic blood in their ancestry!"2 Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) played a crucial role in carrying Comte's views on religion to a next stage of reflection. Durkheim elucidated the nature of religion to be a celebration of a group's or a people's community or social solidarity.3 He postulated that common values form the cohesive bonds of society, particularly in primitive societies, although he also opined, as Mary Ann Glendon has observed, that in his own day communal religions had already lost most of their authority and effectiveness.4 Durkheim himself probably possessed a genuinely religious streak; his father had been the Chief Rabbi of the Vosges and Haute-Marne. Durkheim's own views on religion, however, are thoroughgoingly secular at best. Robert Nisbet, on the other hand, affords valuable insights into the analytical genius of Durkheim in his 1974 book, The Sociology of Emile Durkheim.5 I single out this author as a guide to discovering what may be profitable in Durkheim because Nisbet was a brilliant intellectual historian who saw European history in terms of the decline of morally bound groups. Durkheim's celebrated 1897 study on suicide anticipated this conclusion when the author signaled "moral poverty" and anomie as causal factors in the occurrences of suicide in nineteenth-century Europe.6 Max Weber (1864–1920) brought his peculiar style of idealist or antipositivist reflection to bear on the relationship between the sacred, religion, and morality. His promotion of the fact-value distinction led Leo Strauss to consider Weber the most profound exponent of values relativism in social science.7 The American political scientist Rogers Brubaker expounds on Weber's views and, [End Page 17] in general, the positivist basis of modern culture and society in The Limits of Rationality, An Essay on the Social and Moral Thought of Max Weber.8 Although Durkheim and Weber each develops his own approach to the role that religion plays in secular society, these two thinkers are generally accepted as the forgers of the functional empiricism that governs the epistemological outlook of the modern social sciences. This outlook today affects profoundly the way that Christian believers, especially Catholics, think about God, religion, and, to be sure, morality.9 One way to evaluate the influence that modern sociology has exercised on Catholics in the United States is to observe the evolution from its founding in 1938 of the American Catholic Sociological Society (ACSS) into its present-day embodiment as the Association for...

Framing a Catholic Sociology for Today’s College Students: Historical Lessons and Questions from Furfey, Ross, and Murray, Part II

This is Part II of a continuing exploration of how to more effectively define and teach a Catholic sociology to today’s college students. In Part I, which appeared in the November 2004 issue of this journal, I examined how a specifically Catholic sociology was framed between about 1939 and 1970 in a number of widely used, explicitly Catholic, college-level sociology texts by three key authors of that era: Fr. Paul Hanly Furfey, Dr. Eva Ross, and Fr. Raymond Murray. They were part of a larger movement to shape college curricula and teaching advocated by the American Catholic Sociological Society. These authors developed textbooks that functioned as works of legitimation, works of foundation, and/or works of instruction. Part I dealt with the first two types; in this part I explore the last type, suggest some lessons we may learn from the pioneers’ efforts, and pose some crucial questions to consider today if we are to more successfully develop Catholic college-level sociology programs.

Catholic sociology in America: A comment on the fiftieth anniversary issue, ofSociological Analysis

In the decidedly anti-Catholic atmosphere of both the nation and the secular academy and spurred on by the social encyclical, Quadragesima Anno (1931), both the American Catholic Sociological Society (1938) and its journal, the American Catholic Sociological Review (1940), came into existence. At? tacking the arrogant and intransigent position of American positivistic sociologists who claimed that their work was in no way biased by values, the first president of the American Catholic Sociological Society, Ralph Gallagher, stated that:

The Brief Career of Catholic Sociology

This article traces central elements in the three decade history of the American Catholic Sociological Society in order to determine the specific intentions of its creators and subsequent members as well as examining both those factors that underpinned the creation of the society and those that culminated in the redefinition of the organization's raison d'etre in the late 1 960s. Of particular interest is the issue of whether or not the purpose of the Society was to create a Catholic sociology. From the nineteenth century, Catholic intellectuals have had to develop responses to modernist thought, and for those in America, given their status as a minority religion in a Protestant empire, they have also had to articulate a self-identity (Moore, 1986:48-7 1; Halsey, 1980). American Catholic social thought was thus in fundamental respects a reaction to both modernism and an Americanization movement stemming from a proselytizing Protestantism. Up to World War 1, Catholic thought moved like a pendulum from outright rejection to efforts at reconciliation and reconstruction, predicated in varying degrees upon the shifting pronouncements of papal encyclicals, changes in the American environment, and changes within the Catholic community itself. Between the Wars, however, Catholic intellectuals - especially those identified as liberals - took a more consistently conciliatory stance, seeking not simply a reconciliation with the larger intellectual environment, but attempting simultaneously to preserve central elements of Catholic tradition. To accomplish this, they accepted and participated in the neo-Thomistic or neo-scholastic revival (underway for a half century in Europe) that served to provide an intellectual grid that permitted Catholic intellectuals to chart a theologically appropriate response to their various academic disciplines. It provided a distinctive frame of reference for Catholics in a variety of intellectual endeavors. Thus, neo-Thomism was the ideological undergirding for a multiplicity of organization-building endeavors. The proliferation of organizations concerned with the promotion of scholarship

The Development of Religious Research in the United States: Retrospect and Prospect

This paper examines the professionalization of religious research in the United States and related topics. Because professional societies illumine value orientations and practices among workers in a given field, the nature of the American Catholic Sociological Society, the American Society of Christian Ethics, the Religious Research Association, and the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion are briefly considered. The differential appropriation of religious research in various ecclesiastical bodies, the problem of funding religious research in the American situation, and the shift in emphasis from a pragmatic problem-solving approach focused on institutional survival to a more theoretical approach to the understanding of religious phenomena are discussed. The bifurcation between persons interested in religious research trained under theological faculties and those trained under social science faculties is noted. Likely future lines of development in theory and research are projected. Scholarly interest in religious phenomena and lay involvement with religious institutions in the United States increased for the decade or so following the Second World War. Lay participation in religious institutions increased until the late 1950s, with a bimodal peak of 49 per cent of American adults attending religious services reached in 1955 and 1958. The figure declined to 42 per cent in 1969 (Gallup, 1969). During this postwar period, two professional organizations composed of persons interested in the social scientific study of religion, the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR) and the Religious Research Association (RRA) were incorporated. Each of them founded journals devoted to the "scientific" study of religious phenomena. Though the American Catholic Sociological Society (ACSS) was founded prior to World War II, its focus was shifted in the early 1960s. Prior to that time, it dealt with many sociological topics, but its members decided to center its interest primarily in the sociology of religion. Its journal was renamed Sociological Analy-

American Catholic Sociological Society

American Catholic Sociological Society

Some Convergences and the Identity-Crisis in the American Catholic Sociological Society

Some Convergences and the Identity-Crisis in the American Catholic Sociological Society

1965 Convention of The American Catholic Sociological Society: Edgewater Beach Hotel Chicago, Illinois August 27-29, 1965

1965 Convention of The American Catholic Sociological Society: Edgewater Beach Hotel Chicago, Illinois August 27–29, 1965 Get access Sociology of Religion, Volume 25, Issue 4, Winter 1964, Pages 248–253, https://doi.org/10.1093/socrel/25.4.248 Published: 01 December 1964

The American Catholic Sociological Society Committee Reports

Journal Article The American Catholic Sociological Society Committee Reports Get access Paul J. Reiss, Paul J. Reiss Chairman Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Thomas M. Coffee, Thomas M. Coffee Chairman Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Thomas P. Imse, Thomas P. Imse Chairman Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Herbert F. Leies, Herbert F. Leies Chairman Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar William T. Liu, William T. Liu Chairman Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Mary Brigid, Mary Brigid Chairman Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Rudolph E. Morris, Rudolph E. Morris Chairman Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Robert J. McNamara, S.J., Robert J. McNamara, S.J. Acting Chairman Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar H. Bertram, F.S.C. H. Bertram, F.S.C. Chairman Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Sociology of Religion, Volume 25, Issue 3, Fall 1964, Pages 184–187, https://doi.org/10.1093/socrel/25.3.184 Published: 01 October 1964

American Catholic Sociological Society Annual Report January 1, 1963-December 31, 1963

Journal Article American Catholic Sociological Society Annual Report January 1, 1963–December 31, 1963 Get access Mary Aquinice, O.P. Mary Aquinice, O.P. Exec. Secretary Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Sociology of Religion, Volume 25, Issue 1, Spring 1964, Page 73, https://doi.org/10.1093/socrel/25.1.73 Published: 01 March 1964

1964 Convention of The American Catholic Sociological Society: Windsor Hotel Montreal, Canada August 28-30, 1964

1964 Convention of The American Catholic Sociological Society: Windsor Hotel Montreal, Canada August 28-30, 1964

News and Announcements of the American Catholic Sociological-Society and Its Members

News and Announcements of the American Catholic Sociological-Society and Its Members

Report of the Inter-American Committee of the American Catholic Sociological Society

Report of the Inter-American Committee of the American Catholic Sociological Society

Comment: [A Postwar Reconstruction Program for the American Catholic Sociological Society

Comment: [A Postwar Reconstruction Program for the American Catholic Sociological Society

A Postwar Reconstruction Program for the American Catholic Sociological Society

A Postwar Reconstruction Program for the American Catholic Sociological Society