The American Catholic Family: Signs of Cohesion and Polarization

Abstract

The American Catholic family, like families with other belief systems, is responding to pressures from ongoing rationalization and modernization. This essay explores several dimensions already evident. In particular, the tension between the American quest for personal autonomy and the Catholic tradition of obedience to hierarchical authority is shown to manifest itself in quite different ways among progressive and conservative American Catholics. Relatedly, the Church hierarchy's response has been to evolve slowly from an attempt to control the behavior of Catholic adherents toward an effort to provide support mechanisms and broad normative orientations to cushion Catholics' ongoing social tensions. Still, the movement toward a more modern, rational approach to family life has been met by a countermovement among both laity and clergy/hierarchy. The trends toward cohesion and polarization are examined across a range of issues, including birth control, divorce, and abortion. Finally, demographic changes toward both a younger Catholic population and longer life spans of family members suggest that new family arrangements (spanning several generations) may be in the offing, posing still newer challenges to the institutional church.