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While social scientists have long studied secrecy as a cultural practice, theologians have neglected it as an ecclesial practice. This article examines "segmented secrecy" as an ecclesial practice, that is, secrets kept or divulged in different social networks in a segmented manner. That secrecy is examined in the lives of gay priests in Roman Catholic ecclesial settings in the United States. After a brief sociological analysis of secrecy, the theological analysis reckons first with the ethics of segmented secrecy, arguing for segmented secrecy as a "burdened" form of the virtue of honesty. Next it turns to segmented secrecy as an ecclesial practice, a provisional way of securing protection for marginal persons amidst the larger eschatological protect of the church in the world, despite some moral hazards involved. Zusammenfassung: Geheimhaltung ist eine kulturelle Praxis, wie die Soziologie seit langem weiß. Die Theologie hingegen hat es bislang versäumt, das Geheimhalten von Informationen auch als eine kirchliche Praxis zu betrachten. Der vorliegende Aufsatz untersucht die „segmentierte Geheimhaltung" als eine gebrochene Form von Aufrichtigkeit. Er tut dies am Beispiel homosexueller Prieser in der römisch-katholischen Kirche in den USA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with the research on women's sociology of language in the U.S. It is a puzzling fact about small societies that sex is a highly frequent criterion for role division. In some societies women weave, in others, men. One explanation that has been suggested is that these assignments to ascribed statuses are matters of power, with women routinely being assigned the less-valued statuses. Another explanation is that some roles require long socialization or require strong identification with a group. Role ascription removes the need to recruit and train people explicitly into socially-needed statuses. A major theme in the sociology of language is what makes people talk like each other. If people are separated by space or segregation, divergence takes place. Even communication frequency is inadequate to explain speech similarity. Social cohesion and identification appear to be necessary for speech similarity to arise or be maintained. Speech similarity is a sensitive index of social identification. The language of people who live together but differ in sex is an excellent laboratory for the study of speech diversification. The conjugal relationship is a prime case for the sharing of social relationships.