Overview

This study is about the experiences of the people who served the American Catholic Church in religious orders and subsequently left those orders. This work reveals what aspects of their religious formation remained with them during the course of their lay lives and continue to inspire them, and what were the insurmountable problems for them when they tried to serve the Church within the framework of the traditional vows and communal life.

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9780773463912

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Anthony Blasi and Joseph Zimmerman have given us a valuable new study of the men and women who left religious life in the 1960s and 1970s, presented in a manner to help us understand the revolution in Catholic religious life at that time. The book is an examination of three specific groups which teaches us about the general sea-change in American Catholism. - (From the Preface) Dean R. Hoge This is the first comparative study that I am aware of to examine the motivations and subsequent careers of the men and women who left Roman Catholic religious communities. Few studies have examined this population in the past, and fewer still were ever published or remain in print.....Thus, Drs. Blasi's and Zimmerman's explicit comparison of religious priests and brothers, and of males and females exiting religious orders, is groundbreaking. Their use of statistics from their survey data as well as from quotations from their extended interviews is a useful balance. I was especially interested in their findings of patterns in the family backgrounds (education of parents, years in Catholic schools) of those who left the order as compared to those who stayed. The annotated bibliography s a scholar's treasure.....Overall, this is a good and thorough treatment of a too-little-covered topic. [This book] contains very valuable research data which fills a glaring lacuna in sociology of religion and American Catholic Studies.....This study fills an important niche in the sociology of ordained ministry. It helps us see the social and cultural shifts which led to increased departures from the 1960's on in ordained ministry and vowed religious life and the difficulties in recruiting new cohorts to fill in their ranks..... [This book] will be welcomed by professional sociologists and the growing cadre of persons who staff the burgeoning training programs for lay ministry. - Dr. John A. Coleman S.J., Loyola Marymount University Los Angeles

Author Information

Anthony J. Blasi (PhD, Sociology, Notre Dame; ThD, Regis College and the University of Toronto) has written numerous books and articles, principally in the sociology of religion. He has served as President of the Association for the Sociology of Religion and is currently Professor of Sociology at Tennessee State University.

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