Catholic Identity

• 1. Pro-change Catholics: forging community out of diversity; 2. Doctrinal change in the Catholic Church; 3. Official Church teaching on homosexuality, women's ordination, abortion, and the role of the theologian; 4. Pro-change groups in the Catholic Church: dignity, the women's ordination conference, and Catholics for a free choice; 5. Gay and lesbian Catholics: 'owning the identity differently'; 6. Using doctrine to critique doctrine; 7. Pluralism in community; 8. Reasoned theology: legitimating emancipatory possibilities; 9. The challenges of difference.

'How do Catholics cope with the dramatic and traumatic changes in their Church? How do they manage to sustain a Catholic identity while at the same time dissenting from their hierarchy? Do they redefine their faith in order to continue to be Catholic? Professor Dillon's response to these questions presents a more subtle and sophisticated model of Catholicism than commonly perceived. Her work is a major contribution both to the sociology of religion and to the understanding of American religion.' Andrew M. Greeley, University of Chicago