Roman Catholics in England

Abstract

This book is about change in the Roman Catholic community in England and Wales. It argues that in the post-war years of economic growth and expanded educational opportunities, Catholics born in Great Britain achieved rates of upward social mobility comparable to those of the general population. In so doing there arose a 'new Catholic middle class', likely to be crucial for the future of Roman Catholicism in England and Wales. However, since one quarter of English Catholics were first-generation immigrants who had experienced some downward mobility, it could not be said that English Catholics generally had experienced a 'mobility momentum' relative to the rest of the population. Apart from the effects of social change, post-war Catholicism was also transformed as a result of the religious reforms legitimated by the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s. The net effect of these social and religious forces on English Catholicism was the dissolution of the boundaries which had formerly defended a 'fortress' church in a hostile world. The book identifies this, inter alia, in the widespread heterodoxy of belief and practice, and in the decline of marital endogamy and communal involvement.

Regional Mortality and the Irish in Britain: Findings from the ONS Longitudinal Study

“…Anti-Irish and anti-Catholic attitudes were blatant in the past (Hickman 1995), and they have recently been demonstrated to be pervasive still . However, defensive patterns of occupational specialisation, and of territorial concentration and religious endogamy, have been studied, and argued to be no longer as pronounced as they were (Hornsby-Smith 1987, Charsley 1986). There are no data on how these defensive patterns may have affected health behaviour and sense of identity in the generations (still far from old) that experienced their full constraints.…”

“…This can be seen in the fourth column of Table 1, which gives the geographical distribution of Catholics in 1978. The contemporary English Catholic population owes more to Irish immigration than to any other single ethnic component (Hornsby-Smith 1987) and the validity of Catholic background as an indicator of Irish descent has been confirmed in Scotland (Williams 1993b). Bearing in mind that in the fourth column of Table 1 Catholic proportions are of a different denominator from the first two columns, since the denominator includes the population outside the conurbations, it is nevertheless clear that the north/south distribution of Catholics corresponds to the Irish gradient of 1851 and 1891 rather than to that of 1971.…”

Evangelisation, Mission and Pastoral Strategies

“…a process of dissolution of the boundaries which once defended a distinctive Catholic subculture from contamination in a basically secular society'. 75 This process had been completed largely by the mid 1990s. 76 However, he also notes that, by contrast, there are various groups within the Catholic community.…”

Researching religion: The vocation of the sociologist of religion

“…Historically, Catholics in England had been subject to persecution and until relatively recently were also subject to hostility and discrimination in a predominantly Protestant state. This historical legacy had generated a decided defensiveness, a tendency to 'keep oneself to oneself', not 'lifting one's head above the parapet' or 'rocking the boat' (Hornsby-Smith 1987). In this situation, being a Catholic researcher was a decided advantage in gaining not only physical but also social access to informants.…”