A People Adrift: The Crisis of the Roman Catholic Church in America

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Simon and Schuster, 2004 - Religion - 448 pages
In this widely acclaimed book that will long remain an indispensable work on American religion and the Catholic Church, one of its most influential laymen in the United States says that the Roman Catholic Church in America must either reform profoundly or lapse into irreversible decline.
In addition to providing a spiritual identity for over 60 million Americans, the church is the nation's largest nongovernmental provider of education and social services, as well as the largest not-for-profit provider of health care. But even before the recent revelations about sex abuse by priests, American Catholicism was already heading for a major crisis, with its traditional leadership depleted by the decline in religious vocations and paralyzed by "theological gridlock."
Catholicism in the United States confronts hard choices among contrasting visions for the future, choices with huge implications for American life. Analyzing these choices in ways that escape all the familiar labels of conservative or liberal, Steinfels points to the directions the church must take to survive.

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Contents

Introduction
1
The Battle for Common Ground
17
The Scandal
40
The Church and Society
68
Catholic Institutions and Catholic Identity
103
Around the Altar
165
Passing on the Faith
203
Sex and the Female Church
253
At the Helm
307
Finding a Future
352
Afterword
361
Notes
391
Index
409
Copyright

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About the author (2004)

Peter Steinfels, former co-director of the Fordham University Center on Religion and Culture, is a university professor at Fordham. He was religion columnist for The New York Times and editor of Commonweal. Steinfels is the author of A People Adrift: The Crisis of the Roman Catholic Church in America (Simon & Schuster, 2003). He lives in New York City.

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