AMERICA'S FORGOTTEN PRIESTS

Ecclesiastical sociologists, unlike their secular brethren, have not been reduced to surveying the reaction of Indonesian immigrants to rising laundry prices in south-central Montana. The entire world of the ancient Church extends before them, hitherto innocent of the benefits of the social sciences. Father Fichter, probably American Catholicism's best known practitioner, with this book begins at the bottom and surveys our ""forgotten priests""--i.e., the priest in the parish--on the great problems of today. By means of an elaborate questionnaire, he has gathered opinions, if not a consensus, on practically everything from clerical salaries to clerical celibacy, from the value of honorific titles to the state of racial justice, and from drop-out priests to Medicare. There are no startling revelations in the book, and no panaceas offered, since the intention here is neither to create a sensation nor to solve problems, but merely to record the sentiments of the grass-roots clergy. As such a record, the book will be of interest primarily to the clergy itself, but also to the numerous laymen who have often wondered what ""himself"" in the rectory really thinks.