Twentieth-Century Scottish Catholicism: Poverty, Affluence, and Freedom

Abstract

Abstract The story of twentieth-century Scottish Catholicism is one of demographic and institutional growth until the 1970s and early 1980s, with the reforms of Vatican II inaugurating a crisis in the priesthood and seminary life, while awakening members of the laity to their secular apostolate. Attaining socio-economic parity from the 1980s, the economic and social conditions of Scots Catholics change radically with the advent of new freedoms, with the consequences of material affluence to younger generations including the virtual extinction of Catholic identity as a matter of unchosen ‘fate’, and the shift to Catholicism as a personal ‘lifestyle’ choice; resulting in unprecedented levels of lapsing from Catholic practice. Finally, a new ‘politics of identity’ among Catholics in favour of nationalism has emerged from the 1970s, with Scotland’s Catholics leading the way in the politicization of new freedoms, resulting in the resurrection of the nation’s Catholic-era institutions in the new devolution era.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 14 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.