Catholic contexts: Competition, commitment and innovation

By now it probably is no surprise that competition stimulates Catholic commitment, but many would not expect that the same is true for innovation. This study is based on the 171 dioceses of the continental United States. Using the percentage of Catholics in the population encompassed by the diocese as an inferential measure of the degree of competition faced by the church locally, the data show that the less Catholic the context, the higher the level of commitment and the higher the rates of innovation such as the admission of unordained men and women to leadership positions. The findings are replicated among Southern and non-Southern dioceses and then again with states rather than dioceses as the units of analysis.