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In the whole vast field, of the social sciences, there can hardly be a more neglected subject than the sociology of Catholicism, that is to say, the study of the structure and of the life-processes of the Catholic Church, with the means and methods usually applied by sociologists to other societies or associations. The reasons for this are not far to seek. The Catholic Church is an organization to which it seems well-nigh impossible to assume an objective and unprejudiced attitude. To the classical Protestant she is the scarlet woman of the Apocalypse, the devil’s most dangerous death-trap; to the atheist, whether liberal or communist, she is the main bar to progress, a hateful anachronism; to the Catholic she is a dear mother, and indeed the very Body of Christ. In so far as sociology is a scientific pursuit, a pursuit of the truth without favour or disfavour, the Church of Rome must be one of the most difficult objects to handle. Nevertheless, it is and remains surprising that she has never been properly studied by sociologists. After all, even the Protestant and the atheist cannot close their eyes to the fact that she is in all probability both the oldest and the most numerous social body in our western civilization, and even the Catholic cannot gainsay the fact that if she is the Gate of Heaven, she is necessarily at the same time a human society, showing human, even secular, aspects besides her religious and transcendent traits—aspects which are no less worthy of attention than the others.
