During the past twenty years a massive literature has grown up on the implications for the life of the Roman Catholic Church of modern social changes and shifts in theological emphasis legitimated by the Second Vatican Council. Nevertheless, it would be useful to try to summarize from a sociological standpoint the overall effect of those changes and shifts in the role of the parochial clergy of England and Wales and on their relationship with the laity.

The Roman Catholic community in these countries broadly can be said to comprise six distinct strands in terms of social origins and cultural heritage. First of all there is the largely aristocratic and upper middle class strand, derived from the recusant gentry, in decline since the restoration of the hierarchy in 1850. The second strand consists of a significant infusion of converts. The third, by far the most important numerically, is the mass of Irish immigrants over the past century and a half. About the size and significance of the last three strands we know remarkably little in any detail: Catholic refugees arriving in the 1930s and 1940s from Eastern Europe (especially Poland), and Catholic migrant workers and their families from the Mediterranean countries and from the Caribbean.

Of these various strands, the most significant from the point of view of the emergence of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales as a significant religious and political force is undoubtedly the Irish strand.