Parish and Place: Making Room for Diversity in the American Catholic Church has been awarded First Place in the 2018 Catholic Press Association Book Awards (“Immigration” Category)!

IMMIGRATION
First Place
Parish and Place: Making Room for Diversity in the American Catholic Church by Tricia Colleen Bruce, Oxford University Press
While placed in the area of immigration, the book has a wider significance. It is about the effort to maintain a balance within the American Catholic Church between the primacy of the territorial parish and the increasing need to recognize ‘personal’ parishes- those organized because of special need or purpose. These include congregations based upon ethnicity but may also be established for various other purposes- such as differences of rite and even those responding to the needs of tourists.The book is well organized and researched with the author depending upon personal interviews as well as objective data. The reasoning is sustained and balanced. She raises interesting and provocative questions about how, in the establishment of ‘personal ‘parishes the recognition of diversity can be reconciled with the broader demands for unity within the Church.