My faith, right and wrong.

Sense of the Faithful: How America Catholics Live Their Faith

Jerome Baggett

(Oxford University Press, 2009, 320pp)

978-01+95326956, $29.95

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THE NOTION OF SENSUS fidelium (sense of the faithful) has been a cornerstone of Catholic tradition throughout church history. Reaffirmed at the Second Vatican Council, sensus fidelium suggests that the experience of the faithful should be upheld as a valuable source for theological insight. The Catechism of the Catholic Church even goes so far as to state, "Christ ... fulfills this prophetic office, not only by the hierarchy ... but also by the laity."

While both tradition and doctrine have insisted upon the value of the experience of rank-and-file Catholics, oftentimes this experience is quickly dismissed as "cafeteria Catholicism." Not only has the sense of the faithful been passed over, the church hierarchy and its allies on the Catholic right have muddied the concept of sensum fidelium, favoring absolute authority of the hierarchy. Vatican analyst Marco Politi recently summed it up: "The Pope believes he doesn't need to take account of public opinion."

Indeed, Jerome Baggett, an assistant professor of religion and sociology at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, is not a member of the church hierarchy. That notwithstanding, Baggett sets out to do exactly what the hierarchy is meant to do" gather a sense of the faithful. In his book, appropriately titled Sense of the Faithful, Baggett does not take on the insurmountable task of discovering the sense of the 1.1 billion Catholics worldwide or even the 69 million US Catholics. Rather, he starts with the local--the faithful of San Francisco.

Baggett selected six parishes in San Francisco for his study, chosen to represent various facets of US Catholicism: Saint Mary-Francis de Sales, a multiethnic community comprised mostly of people from the working and middle class; Saint Louis Bertrand, another predominantly working-class multiethnic parish; Saint Monica, a middle- to upper-class parish made up of mostly Anglos; Saint Augustine, an exurban parish comprised of middle-class Anglos; Saint Margaret Mary Parish, a parish made of mostly middle-class Anglos which still conducts its main masses in Latin; and, finally, Most Holy Redeemer, a middle-class parish with a majority of parishioners who identify as gay or lesbian.

In total, he surveyed 301 active parishioners, interviewed nearly that many and spent plenty of time at parish events getting the lay of the land. The result of Baggett's research is a brilliant mix of the quantitative and the qualitative, combined with more than a few nods to the sociologists who laid the groundwork for the study of religion.

For the quantitative part, Baggett owes much to sociologist William V. D'Antonio as he borrowed (with permission) questions from D'Antonio's surveys of US Catholics in 1999 and 2005. Not only did D'Antonio provide the questions, but the survey results from 1999 and 2005 offered a compelling comparison to Baggett's own survey results. While more often than not those surveyed in the Bay Area study are far more committed to the central tenets of Catholicism, Baggett is quick to explain that D'Antonio surveyed all different types of Catholics, not just the active parishioners of Baggett's study.

Unlike D'Antonio, Baggett does not stop at the quantitative. Rather, he goes a long way to round out the raw data through in-person interviews and participant observation. It is here that Baggett is able to move beyond the notion that all US Catholics are simply "cafeteria Catholics" and discover how US Catholics "remain faithful while at the same time making their own choices about which features of 'the spirit of the age' to celebrate or castigate and which 'new opinions' to accept or reject." He is able to hold that tension between institutional religious meanings and how people actively negotiate with these meanings while still maintaining their faithfulness to said institution.

TO EMPHASIZE THIS TENSION AND complexity, Sense of the Faithful is framed in three main sections as one might view a painting: Getting Situated: The View From Afar, Leaning Closer: Examining the Brushstrokes; and Stepping Back: Thinking about the Big Picture. Each section is a blend of stories of individuals who were interviewed and charts of survey results with broader ideologies of past and present sociologists weaved in.

Baggett invites his readers to "get situated" in the first section and gives a concise history--from a sociologist's vantage point--of American Catholicism. He appropriately starts with Pope Leo XIII's condemnation of "Americanism" in which the pope suggested, "The underlying principle of these new opinions is that, in order to more easily attract those who differ from her, the church should shape her teachings more in accord with the spirit of the age and relax some of her ancient severity and make some concessions to new opinions."

Statements like these make Baggett's art metaphor even more appropriate. Much like the dialectical debate over whether art influences society or vice versa, the same type of question could be applied to US Catholicism. Does or should the church hierarchy shape its teachings for the faithful or should the faithful shape their practices for the church? Or is it both at the same time? The responses of those interviewed in Baggett's study show that, similarly to the art debate, there is no clear-cut answer no matter where one falls on the conservative-liberal spectrum.

Baggett goes on to underscore this historical tension through the mid-century and, most importantly Vatican II. He rounds out the first section with some rationale for his study and the methodology, namely the importance of going beyond the quantitative to "capture the complexities of people's religious agency and moral discernment." He then gives a brief yet illuminating explanation of the meaning of culture (a section which he modestly suggests that well-educated sociologists could skip). The discussion on culture concludes with a look into the culture of the study's six parishes. And so the readers are situated.

THE SECOND SECTION MAKES UP the bulk of Sense of the Faithful. In his analysis, Baggett moves logically from self to institution to community to civil society. On self, he focuses on two simple phrases frequently tossed around in his interviews (and in conversations we've all been in, I suspect): "my faith" or "for me." These qualifiers or modifiers, he explains, show that US Catholics regard faith as a personal thing and at the same time they are hesitant to assert that their faith trumps all others--a view in contradiction to church teaching.

On institution, Baggett juxtaposes the two parishes in his study at the opposite ends of the conservative-liberal spectrum, Most Holy Redeemer (the gay, liberal parish) and Saint Margaret Mary (the parish that still has Latin Masses). However, instead of pitting them against each other, which might be the obvious way to go, Baggett shows how the parishioners of the two parishes are similar in their approach to the institution.

Baggett emphasizes that each parish negotiates with tradition, an idea often lost in analyses of conservative Catholics, also called traditionalists. These "traditionalists," exemplified in Saint Margaret Mary parish, do not follow tradition to the letter as much as we might think. For instance, Baggett describes an Ash Wednesday service at Saint Margaret Mary parish as a "self-conscious, liturgical riposte to the purportedly irreverent fashion in which masses are conducted in other churches." The traditionalists are not unlike the rest of US Catholics in that they are reactive and therefore stray from the very tradition which they claim to follow so closely.

On community, Baggett underlines the sense of the faithful which is the need for belonging. Whether in so-called "hometown" parishes or in multicultural parishes, parishioners are looking for either a place where people know them or a place where they feel connected to their community. And on civil society, Baggett touches on the hoary business of how parishes, as private entities, interact with the public.

After he provides this closer look, Baggett gives his assessment of the big picture. And what it all comes down to, for him, is seeing how Catholicism is a living tradition, a living tradition with which all types of Catholics negotiate. In the final paragraph, he says, "Lived religion is messy, and it exists in between the familiar coordinates on which people's approach to the sacred is often plotted."

Indeed, what would perhaps seem frustrating for some--but what is most refreshing about this honest book is that the study comes to no concrete conclusions. We don't learn which came first: the chicken or the egg, church teachings or the interpretations of the faithful. However, it is in this tension, this gray area, that US Catholicism is its truest self. Certainly, Baggett's study as outlined in Sense of the Faithful does just that--it gathers a sense of the faithful (albeit a small segment of the multitudes). And the church hierarchy might just take a nod from this noble endeavor.

KATE CHILDS GRAHAM is communications associate at Catholics for Choice.