"The sociological approach to Roman Catholicism used to favor regular church attendance and doctrinal conformity as the two most relevant benchmarks of the alleged religious involvement of the faithful. Exploring the composite nebula of the "cultural Catholics", who claim to a Catholic identity without conforming themselves to the ecclesiastical standards, John Portmann's book offers a vivid and renewed overview of the internal plurality of Roman Catholicism, and enlarges the sociological approach to its normative system." - Professor Danièle Hervieu-Léger, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France, and author of Religion as a Chain of Memory
