The Sociology of Religion

 

 

THE SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION

See 8:29:

I believe they [SSPX] have a problem in recruiting new people, but still they have several thousand in different countries. So it’s not a tiny group as some others are. I was reading in [an] Italian newspaper, it’s like the reform of Martin Luther. No, the size is not the same. Martin Luther had behind him entire countries [and] also for political reasons. These people do not have countries. They have several thousands [or] perhaps tens of thousands, but not hundreds of thousands.

Q: Does…SSPX really have 600,000 followers?

…SSPX on their website claims that they have 600,000 followers. No, I don’t believe they have 600,000. No, I mean, I’m talking again [about] people who may occasionally attend the mass of the Society is perhaps even more. But people who when asked about their identity to what Catholic groups you belong and they say yeah I am…Catholic of course but I’m with the Society. I believe the order is [in] the tens of thousands not the hundreds of thousands.

…if you go see one of their masses and even put together their masses around Italy they are some thousands…in the low thousands not in the tens of thousands, people who may keep in touch through the websites people who perhaps once a year will go and look how their masses look like, they may be more but these are not people whose primary identity is to be a follower of the Society.

…sociologists deal with identities and my question is how many people in the world will answer yes to the question what is your religious identity or spiritual…at the end of the day we have this problem with the Catholics because when we say one billion or more than one billion, sociologists use the expression one billion can be split into concentric circles. So because not all in this billion they go to Mass every Sunday, not even once a month. So you say there are concentric circles, there are those who go to Mass every Sunday, those who go once in a while, those who go once a year, and those who say in interviews what’s your religion I’m a Catholic but they don’t normally go to Mass. So even for the Catholics the statistics are always very difficult.

It’s also true that they have…competition at their right. There are small groups.

See 15:41:

There is also another element which always made [it] difficult for them to build [a] coalition and that’s the clericalism of the Society. Because the Society tried several times in its history to create [a] lay movement. They [existed] but never [were] very successful, kind of small. Why? Because in the modern world, even among Catholics and I dare say even among conservative Catholics, there is now this idea [of] lay movement, of lay leaders. But that’s not how the Society sees it. The Society believes that the ultimate authority should be in the hands of the priests, not of the laity. And that also creates some problems and friction even with conservative Catholics. The…clericalism of the Society is very strong.

See 16:44:

Q: You have done work on religious markets and what makes a religion survive and thrive. …can you…explain…how that study of religion works and how it might apply to the Society?

…This may be and is often misunderstood. It’s the legacy of a great American sociologist Rodney Stark who passed away a few years ago. We have written one book and several articles together. …Stark is often misunderstood because when you talk of religious market you say oh that’s just dismissing religion as just another product. That was never the intention of Rodney Stark.

He said that methodologically you can use economic model[s] to study the competition between different religions. But then he said…to say that the theology is irrelevant he wrote once would be like studying the market for automobiles and say the engine is irrelevant. That would be simply stupid. So of course the theology is relevant. Of course how people live, the example they give is relevant. But that still allows [us] to use models coming from the science of economy to study the…competition particularly missionary fields.

So it was a methodological tool. It was not a judgment reducing religion to a commodity or…a product among the others.

Having said so, Stark’s idea is that while the general opinion may be that the most lax [or] liberal groups prosper, the contrary is true. Because the liberal groups have more free riders, which in sociology the free rider is like somebody who boards a bus and tries not to pay [for] the ticket. And the free riders are those who come to church on Saturday but try not to contribute. Okay, they can give one euro or two, but they try not really to give. They only take. Now if you have a lot of free riders, which is typical of the very relaxed and not strict organization, you don’t grow and in fact normally you shrink because you service a number of people who…don’t really give you, they only want to receive something from you. Now the stricter group they have less free riders and so they can prosper and of course [we] could give examples like the Jehovah’s witnesses or the latter-day saints or some evangelical group but also in the Muslim world some of the fundamentalist groups grow. The few normally liberal groups in Islam remain very small.

So this theory I believe is still valid today. It needs some adjustment.

See 25:35:

In France there are thousands of people deeply attached to the traditional liturgy but if they are left alone celebrating the traditional liturgy even if the Church maintains its doctrine on ecumenism, good seeds of the truth in other religions, etc., etc. they will stay with the Church because for them but not for the Society liturgy is almost the only point.

https://youtu.be/-2CO4CUW-bI?si=8Y-Uc79sMd-FAbtD

—Vatican Access with Robert Duncan and Catholic News Service, “How Pope Leo Changed the Future of the SSPX,” YouTube video, 31:59 minutes, July 3, 2026

Massimo Introvigne’s exposition is very informative if you can get past the accent. Sociology offers us an enlightening perspective to understand Roman Catholic institutions. The Church needs more science, not less.

Here we obtain an accurate assessment of the size of Society of Saint Pius X’s or SSPX’s following in the Roman Catholic Church and other information besides. They number in the tens of thousands, and it is a minority of those associated with the schismatic group that fully subscribes to the theological opposition to Leo XIV. Moreover, most of those who go to the Traditional Latin Mass celebrated by the schismatic group are occasional or incidental attendees.

SSPX has always interested me because it is like a fraternal twin of Opus Dei, although unlike SPSS the latter maintains communion with the pope. Opus Dei like SSPX propounds a parallel magisterium but in secret, heavily so. Opus Dei evades being directly targeted by the Vatican because it works under a tightly developed secrecy.

Keeping Opus Dei finances secret is a major part of the right-wing group’s agenda as a quasi-Masonic organization. Big money enables it to sustain independently of the mainstream Church its voluminously idiosyncratic doctrine.