Gary J. Adler, Jr., Tricia C. Bruce, and Brian Starks (eds.): American Parishes: Rethinking Local Catholicism. Catholic
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Gary J. Adler, Jr., Tricia C. Bruce, and Brian Starks (eds.): American Parishes: Rethinking Local Catholicism. Catholic Practice in North America Fordham University Press, New York, 2019, 263 pp., ISBN:978–0-8232–8434-4 Kevin J. Christiano1 Received: 11 April 2020 / Accepted: 25 April 2020 © Religious Research Association, Inc. 2020
As a “cradle Catholic” and a frequent traveler, I have joined quite a few local Catholic congregations for Sunday liturgies in places from ocean to ocean and gulf to sea. The focus of these assemblies has ranged from grand rituals in cavernous cathedrals at the centers of major world cities to unadorned prayer among fleeting worshippers in borrowed premises, whether a small room off the lobby of an institutional dormitory in northerly Québec or outdoors beneath a rented tent in sunny south Florida. Naturally, then, I nurse a personal conceit that I already know a fair amount about how such groups of my co-religionists initiate, operate, and replicate. Yet I cannot say enough about this book. (I have at my disposal only several hundred words, however, so this review will not be able to do full justice to the editors and contributors.) American Parishes is a specialized publication of the best kind: one from which almost any interested reader can learn valuable ideas, practical lessons, and even a few good anecdotes about religion in the daily lives of believers. This assessment, on second thought, should not be too surprising. The volume’s trio of editors has worked with great dedication recently to revive the study of the parish as a religious and social institution. Their collective aim, to use their own words, is to map “the intersection of three distinct social forces: community, geography, and authority” and thereby “to pave a path for a sociological reengagement with Catholic parishes” (pp. 1 and 4). And the parish is just the place to resume any attempt still to comprehend the position of the Catholic Church in America, given how the Church lives and breathes through its local presences. As one historian, R. Scott Appleby, wrote more than two decades ago, “Whatever their opinion about the issues dividing the Church, * Kevin J. Christiano [email protected] 1
Department of Sociology, Jenkins and Nanovic Halls, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556‑7000, USA
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the vast majority of American Catholics tend to think of themselves as members of a parish rather than of a movement” (Commonweal [March 14, 1997]: 17–20). Indeed, attachments of individual Catholics above the local-church level are practically optional... to approaching the point of irrelevance. All of the most significant associational and devotional action in American Catholicism takes place in more than 17,000 individual parish venues across the country. An active, committed Catholic could go through a lifetime of normative and conventional religious practice, and—if he or she is not sharply attentive during its mention in the Eucharistic Prayer
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