Sacred Callings

Sacred Callings is an innovative sociological study of cross-national trends in the global Catholic priesthood. Based on a comparative-historical analysis of priesthood trends in Argentina, Malta, Nigeria, and the Philippines during 1950-2010, the monograph investigates how significant developments within the Catholic Church have shaped the evolution of vocations over time. The book introduces and tests a new critical events theory, proposing a four-part framework-ecumenical councils, prophetic stances, sexual scandals, and papal visits-to help explain variation in priesthood trends. It demonstrates how these events operate as cues for religious callings, as well as how they interact with another. Amid a global demographic shift in the Catholic priesthood -marked by declining vocations in Western regions and growing numbers in countries such as Nigeria-Sacred Callings provides a timely analysis of an important dynamic in the contemporary Church. In doing so, it offers fresh theoretical and empirical insights into the role of short-term events in shaping religious change in modern societies.