Non-Catholics Influenced Council’s Liberalization

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Melissa Wilde, an associate professor of sociology in the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania, led a team of researchers that investigated data from the Vatican Secret Archive to determine the critical factors influencing how bishops voted at the Second Vatican Council, a university statement announces.

Their findings are outlined in “Religious Economy or Organizational Field? Predicting Bishops’ Votes at the Second Vatican Council,” published in the August issue of American Sociological Review.

The researchers found that the relationship between the Church and state, as well as changes in the institution’s situation in relation to other institutions, particularly a loss of dominance and the presence of and relationship with other religious institutions, were crucial factors in predicting whether religious leaders would be open to change and also what kinds of change they would prioritize.

They concluded that, in places where the Catholic Church enjoyed a stable monopoly as the state church, religious leaders were almost impervious to outside influence and opposed to most kinds of change. In areas in which Catholicism was not the established faith but where the religious field was stable, however, leaders of other religious institutions were a crucial source of influence on bishops who attended and voted at Vatican II.

The article also explores factors that predicted bishops’ votes on two of the most contentious issues dividing the Roman Catholic Church during Vatican II from 1962-1965: the validity of a document titled “On the Sources of Revelation,” which upholds the inerrancy of the Bible, and the importance of the Virgin Mary.

“This is the first attempt to subject any Council votes to rigorous quantitative analysis,” said lead author Wilde, who studies the processes and factors that direct religious change. “It was exciting being the first person to gain access to these votes on an event as important as the Council.”  

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