Abstract
Ben Clements of the University of Leicester and Stephen Bullivant of St Mary’s University in London have produced a sociological study of what Catholics in Britain believe and do in recent decades. They report findings on church attendance, schooling and leadership (the bishops and Pope Francis), gender equality, political party allegiances and voting. They cite findings from different age groups about what they believe and do, examining the contemporary Catholic community in the wider contexts of British Christianity (especially Anglican) and the global faith to which they adhere.
The book sets out Catholic views on abortion, birth control, divorce, Mass attendance, same-sex marriage and women priests. The two authors also attend to prayer, confession, the eucharistic presence, belief in life after death, and assisted suicide. They are properly aware of the way in which Christianity continues to appeal disproportionately to women – something that is not peculiar to British Catholic women and for which there is no easy explanation.
Clements and Bullivant remark that ‘there are significant numbers’ of ex-Anglican priests who have become Catholic priests (p. 84). What are the statistics? And are there surveys on how they have been received by the ‘cradle’ Catholics and adult converts to Catholicism? Presumably official sources could have supplied the former. And do we still wait for surveys in the latter area?
This study contains little on the impact of the Second Vatican Council – only two brief references (pp. 1, 104). But the authors refer to studies on Vatican II by Michael P. Hornsby-Smith. Bullivant has joined another colleague, Shaun Blanchard, in writing Vatican II: a very short introduction (scheduled for publication by Oxford University Press in March 2023).
Clements and Bullivant are well aware of the limits of any survey-based study. They led me to list Catholic individuals and institutions in Britain who have enriched my human and Christian identity, when I four times lived in and regularly visited the UK (from 1965 to 2018). They included writers (e.g. G. K. Chesterton, Graham Greene, J. R. R. Tolkien, Evelyn Waugh and Antonia White), Catholics at the BBC, Catholics in universities, chaplaincies and colleges (not least Heythrop College and Campion Hall), editors of the London Tablet and other journals, Catholics at publishing houses, Mercy sisters working for the homeless, Oxfam, priests and bishops to whom I lectured in the UK (and many of whom I had taught at the Gregorian University in Rome), those at the Ammerdown centre in Somerset, eucharistic ministers, permanent deacons, and other Catholic individuals and centres. Hardly any of these individuals or institutions (including communities of religious men and women) find a place in Catholics in Contemporary Britain. But we should be grateful for a valuable sociological source on matters that guide pastoral policy and practice.