Role Commitment Processes and the American Catholic Priesthood

In this article we develop a general model for explaining role commitment as a process in which continuing in the role depends on the net balance of its rewards and costs. With an eight-variable path model we can account for half the variance in the decisions of a sample of 3,045 American Catholic priests to stay in or leave the ministry. The causal analysis shows that the cost of celibacy is currently a priest's principal consideration in the commitment sequence. Thus, if he sees marriage as a desirable opportunity foregone, if the costs of loneliness outweigh the satisfactions that flow from his job assessed in terms of a modern set of values, and if movement is made easier by the fact of his being relatively young and inner-directed, the clergyman will probably decide to quit his position as a religious professional. We also test the possible influence of social contexts and present, with one notable exception, a series of negative findings. Our discussion focuses on the implications of authority, sexuality, and value systems for commitment to the priestly role.