Status and Mobility of catholics vis-a-vis Several Protestant Denominations: More Evidence.

In recent years, several authors have shown that over the past two or three decades the status of Catholics in America has risen more rapidly than that of Protestants (see Greeley, 1963; Bressler and Westoff, 1963; Mack et al., 1956; Vaughn et al., 1966; and Lipset and Bendix, 1959). A recent and well-documented article by Glenn and Hyland (1967) demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt that Catholics are now of higher average status than Protestants as a category. Several other studies in the recent past (Lenski, 1961; Pope, 1955; and Hollingshead and Redlich, 1958) have shown that Catholics were, until recently, of lower average status than Protestants as a category, and lower than most large individual Protestant denominations. If this was in fact the case, then the higher current status of Catholics necessarily means Catholics have been more mobile than Protestants. Among the more commonly-accepted reasons for the apparent "mobility advantage" of Catholics are those expressed by Glenn and Hyland (1967). They say: "The more favorable distribution of Catholics by region and community size could mask a religiously-based handicap, and there are reasons to believe that it does." They argue that since Catholics are more urban and more concentrated in the non-southern regions than are Protestants, and status and mobility in these areas are higher than in the country generally, these facts explain the nationwide Catholic advantage in status. Curiously, Glenn and Hyland claim that their data support Greeley's (1963) finding that Catholics have no mobility disadvantage, but hold that Lenski (1961) and Lipset and Bendix (1959) were right in their conclusions that Protestants were more mobile than Catholics. Glenn and Hyland suggest that there is little reason to further explore Protestant-Catholic status and mobility questions, since the differences were (or are) probably minimal, and other kinds of questions are more important. Among such questions, they cite research into dif- ferences among various Protestant denominations as a possible area of inquiry. And clearly there is a need for more good research into areas such as the latter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]