Influence Of Priests Research Articles

Priest, parishioner and posterity: A Dutch urban legend or historical fact?

This article analyzes the influence of priests on the number of children among Dutch Catholics between 1935 and 1970, based on a survey held among old retired priests and priests who had abandoned the priesthood as well as their parishioners. Whereas we heard dramatic testimonies of meddlesome priests, which are popularly considered to be undisputed fact, these practices were found to have disappeared earlier than generally assumed due to the process of modernization within the Church. Interviews with both priests and parishioners showed the prominent role played by the transfer of religious values in the parental home, sexual taboos and by the lack of information about sexuality and birth control.

The Influence of Priests on the Political Attitudes of Roman Catholics

For years, scholars in religion and politics have worked under the assumption that clergy wield significant political influence with their congregations. Until recently, however, this assumption had gone largely uninvestigated and undemonstrated. This article helps correct this shortcoming by analyzing the Notre Dame Study of Catholic Parish Life for evidence of priestly influence on the political attitudes of Catholic parishioners. Though the data indicate that Catholic priests do, indeed, appear to influence the political attitudes of their parishioners, the nature of this influence is more complex than previously demonstrated. Specifically, pastor ideology is the key predictor of both parishioners' issue positions and political ideology, and influence appears to be restricted to politically liberal pastors.

Cherokee History: An Analysis of Recent Studies

Within the last few years there has been an outpouring of significant new studies on the Cherokees, despite the fact that this group of Indians has had more attention paid to it than almost any other Native American nation. Traditionally, historians emphasized the Cherokees' revolutionary changes in becoming civilized. Yet now scholars are tending to fit these changes into a context of stronger cultural persistence and continuity. Some of the most exciting changing viewpoints have come in an understanding of traditional Cherokee legal ideas and belief systems. Building upon his earlier work A Law of Blood: The Primitive Law of the Cherokee Nation (New York: New York University Press, 1970), John Phillip Reid clarifies the legal code of eighteenth century Cherokees and how these ideas affected relations with non-Indians. In A Better Kind of Hatchet: Law, Trade, and Diplomacy in the Cherokee Nation during the Early Years of European Contact (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1976), Reid shows that the English officials tried to deal with the Indians as with state-level societies, but that these policies were a failure because Cherokee chiefs had no coercive powers to command individuals. Legal codes were enforced by the clans, and there was no strong national leadership class. While Reid may have overreacted against Fred Gearing's emphasis on the influence of priests and warriors, his books contribute to a better conception of early contact Cherokees. Likewise, Rennard Strickland, Fire and the Spirits: Cherokee Law from Clan to Court (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1975) also focuses on legal aspects. Strickland's main point is that the changes in adaptation to white pressures were not a dramatic shift from savagism to civilization, but were a more gradual evolutionary adaptation of traditional forms. The 1827 Cherokee Constitution functioned to preserve many of the

Conditionnements sociaux des vocations sacerdotales en Pologne

The author draws up certain hypotheses on the social conditioning of priestly and religious vocations in Poland, on the basis of a survey realized in 1962. The survey shows the influence of the family, the social valorisation of the priestly life and the influence of priests, as factors favorable to the nurturing of priestly vocations. On the other hand the pattern of the priestly role, the renouncing of that which is socially valorised are negative factors in certain social environments. A new motivation appears in the social classes where the need for promotion is no longer imperative, linking the religious need to the perfection of the person. Such facts lead to a questionning of the way religion is inserted in society. In a second part, the author tries to understand the reasons for the disproportion noted between the large number of those who desire to enter the seminary and the actual number of candidates. The favorable factors (family environment, in fluence of priests) are neutralised by the attraction of a social success and especially by the image of the Church which perpetuates out-dated patterns of religiosity. The religious appears as peripheral and secondary in society because of the practice of the Church.