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Religion in a Deliberative Society: What Really Happened to Us in the "Era of Secularization"

In the last fifty years Catholics have experienced dramatic changes in their Church.1 To make some sense of these changes, sociologists have often resorted to interpretations borrowed from traditional “secularization” theories. In contrast to that venerable tradition, I prefer to borrow from contemporary political sociology to argue that many of these changes can be viewed in retrospect as corollaries of a shift in the strategy of a Church intent on “optimalizing” its relationship with society at large and with its own members. Though my discourse will be mainly about the Catholic experience, many of my propositions may apply to other Christian denominations as well. Before I begin to explore this daunting topic, fair warning should be given about the language of “sociologese” that shall be used here. This is, first, an uncommon and impoverished dialect of the English language. Next, even those acquainted with it may find its jargon rather outlandish when applied to religious phenomena. Last, more than unusual jargon is implied in this language: it also proposes a dif-