Goodbye Father:  The Celibate Male Priesthood and the Future of the Catholic Church
In Full Pews and Empty Altars (1993), Schoenherr and Lawrence Young produced the definitive demographic study of the American Catholic priesthood of the late 20th century. Schoenherr planned the present work, written in 1995, as a follow-up study. After his death in 1996, the manuscript was given to his former student Yamane (sociology, Notre Dame Univ.), who made editorial revisions and arranged for its publication. The book's premise is that the decline in the number of priests is the engine driving the social forces creating pressure for structural change in the Catholic Church. Schoenherr argues that the Church needs to lift its ban on ordaining married men-a move he sees as the inevitable result of irreversible historic trends. Such a transformation would serve to strengthen "authentic religion" within Catholicism and would dismantle one of the strongest supports for patriarchy in human society. Though the ideas here will be controversial among Catholics, this is an important study and one of the stronger books to take on this subject in the past year. Recommended for all seminary and academic libraries and for most public libraries.David I. Fulton, Coll. of St. Elizabeth, Morristown, NJCopyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.