Catholic Newcastle as Microcosm

Extract

The sociology of religion is unevenly developed. If you want to read a good book on one of the sectarian forms of religion, such as the Moonies, the Mormons, the Jehovah’s Witnesses or the Hare Krishna movement, you can generally find what you are looking for. But on Catholicism there is a dearth of good sociological literature: a paradoxical state of affairs when one considers the enormous scope the subject offers for analysis informed by sociological insight rather than by theological or administrative concerns. For this reason, the publication of such an excellent study as The Two Catholic Churches is to be warmly welcomed.

Our concern here is with the issues Archer has raised rather than with the book itself. So, in writing about the portrait he presents of present-day English Catholicism, I shall be concentrating on the interpretation which he offers rather than on the descriptive element. But his description and his interpretation are so closely dovetailed that commenting primarily on the latter is a rather artificial procedure. In doing so, moreover, I may seem not to give this highly readable and stimulating book the praise it merits, since the interpretative framework strikes me as being more vulnerable to criticism than Archer’s account of what it was like to be a Catholic in Newcastle before the Second Vatican Council. Yet it is in the nature of interpretations to be open to question; thus, if in what follows I do question some parts of the analysis, that in no way lessens my admiration for Archer’s skill in conveying to nonCatholic readers something of the social reality of Catholicism in England.