The Rise and Decline of Catholic Religious Orders: A Social Movement Perspective by Patricia Wittberg, S.C. (review)

486 BOOK REVIEWS the Church, Hurten argues, common believers helped resist a totalitarian system and fortified themselves against National Socialism. The Church offered that sacramental life despite persecution, and therein lies the true nature of Catholic resistance, according to the author. In the six final essays of the collection, Hurten fleshes out his critique of church-state relations with a defense of Christian Democracy and a condemnation of nearly all that came with the 1960's. The legacy of Adenauer and the CDU/CSU is heralded as having founded a viable democracy upon the correct relationship of Christianity to the German citizen. The author portrays Vatican Council II as problematic at best, and Cardinal Ratzinger as a clarion in the contemporary Church. Commentary interspersed with evidence makes these essays both evocative and frustrating. There is much here to consider and debate, because Hurten articulates the conservative perspective with clarity and freshness. I was pleasantly surprised by the essays on the November Revolution and on Jacques Maritain's influence in Germany. The editor should also be commended for his coherent and logical selection of essays, which allows this book to become more than the sum of its parts. The publisher, however, should be chastised for the typographical errors that mar nearly every page. EricYonke University ofWisconsin-Stevens Point The Rise and Decline of Catholic Religious Orders:A Social Movement Perspective . By Patricia Wittberg, S.C. (Albany: The State University of New York Press. 1994. Pp. xii,423. $1995 paperback.) Wittberg's is a thought-provoking analysis, from a sociological perspective, of cycles of growth and decline experienced over time by religious congregations in the Roman Catholic tradition. The author rightly points out parallels between religious congregations in the Church and expressions of communal living in other religious traditions such as the Shakers which have tended to monopolize the attention of sociologists in the past. There is a compelling urgency for sociologists to redirect their research toward Roman Catholic congregations—"the largest and most widespread representation of the communal religious lifestyle ever to exist in the United States or elsewhere"—at a time when declining membership threatens the extinction of this way of life. Assisted by her training both as a religious (Sister of Charity) and as a sociologist ,Wittberg fits religious community phenomena into sociological theory in a credible and highly readable fashion, viewing congregations as intentional communities or normative organizations; their growth cycles as social movements ; factors and motivations supporting growth as resource mobilization; their dominant spirituality or ideology as frame alignment; their members, reli- BOOK REVIEWS 487 gious virtuosi; and their decline as resource deprivation and frame disalignment . Chapters on theory and vocabulary, both religious and sociological, and on the history ofCatholic religious orders and congregations,preface the main section on growth and decline cycles from late classical through the contemporary era. Tables such as "Basic Purposes of Religious Life" as given in sources from the fourth through the nineteenth centuries; and "External Sources of Communal Decline" from the fourth through the eighteenth centuries, supply convenient reference points for the narrative analysis. The volume culminates with consideration of the precipitous decline of religious congregations over the past thirty years in the United States, a process which began manifesting itself inWestern European countries in the years immediately followingWorldWar II. Bibliography is thorough with regard to relevant sociological studies; historical sources cited are of uneven quality, a weakness which does not seriously detract from the book's success in suggesting a fresh interpretation of the profound changes affecting contemporary religious congregations. It is to be hoped that this exploratory effort will lead to further research on rapidly disappearing forms of religious life in the Church today. Karen M. Kennelly, CSJ. Mount St. Mary's College, LosAngeles Intransigeance ou compromis: Sociologie et histoire du catholicisme actuel. By Paul-André Turcotte. [Héritage et Projet, 51] (Quebec, Canada: Editions Fides. 1994. Pp. 464. $3995 paperback). The author combines sociological and historical methods to analyze the problems and opportunities facing the Roman Catholic Church in the Province of Quebec, Canada. This approach alone merits wide readership of the book by professionals in both fields. Its value, however, is not limited to methodology. While the...