Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Pro-Change Catholics: Forging Community out of Diversity
- 2 Doctrinal Change in the Catholic Church
- 3 Official Church Teaching on Homosexuality, Women's Ordination, Abortion, and the Role of the Theologian
- 4 Pro-Change Groups in the Contemporary Church: Dignity, the Women's Ordination Conference, and Catholics for a Free Choice
- 5 Gay and Lesbian Catholics: “Owning the Identity Differently”
- 6 Using Doctrine to Critique Doctrine
- 7 Pluralism in Community
- 8 Reasoned Theology: Legitimating Emancipatory Possibilities
- 9 Catholic Options
- Appendix: Research Methodology
- References
- Index
9 - Catholic Options
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Pro-Change Catholics: Forging Community out of Diversity
- 2 Doctrinal Change in the Catholic Church
- 3 Official Church Teaching on Homosexuality, Women's Ordination, Abortion, and the Role of the Theologian
- 4 Pro-Change Groups in the Contemporary Church: Dignity, the Women's Ordination Conference, and Catholics for a Free Choice
- 5 Gay and Lesbian Catholics: “Owning the Identity Differently”
- 6 Using Doctrine to Critique Doctrine
- 7 Pluralism in Community
- 8 Reasoned Theology: Legitimating Emancipatory Possibilities
- 9 Catholic Options
- Appendix: Research Methodology
- References
- Index
Summary
This study has focused on a select group of Americans: pro-change Catholics and theologians who articulate a Catholic identity that challenges the official church view. Catholics who are openly gay or lesbian, advocates of women's ordination, or pro-choice on abortion are delegitimated in official church teaching and practices. Theologians' interpretive autonomy is similarly restricted by the church hierarchy. Nonetheless, pro-change Catholics and many theologians contest the boundaries of Catholic identity delineated by the Vatican and reconstruct what it means for individuals, collectivities, and the church to be Catholic.
The commitment of pro-change Catholics to the church and the resources they use to affirm a plural identity engage important sociological debates. This book's findings illustrate the complex and multifaceted nature of individual experiences, the importance of shared group membership in both anchoring and mobilizing individuals, and the differentiated nature of the Catholic Church as both a doctrinal tradition and an institutional environment.
VALUING COMMUNITY AND PLURALISM
Communitarians (e.g, Etzioni 1997: 128, 197) worry that the celebration of individual and group differences may lessen people's willingness to acknowledge the ties that link them to others, thus resulting in a fragmentation of societal cohesiveness and moral order. This concern is bolstered by recent studies emphasizing Americans' inability to define themselves using a moral vocabulary that recognizes their participation in an ongoing web of obligatory social relationships (Bellah et al. 1985; Glendon 1991).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Catholic IdentityBalancing Reason, Faith, and Power, pp. 242 - 256Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999