Graduate Student Peter Harvey Publishes "It's a Total Way of Life? Catholic Priests, Women's Ordination, and Identity Work" with the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion

Peter Harvey, Ph.D. student, publishes "It's a Total Way of Life? Catholic Priests, Women's Ordination, and Identity Work" with the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. Through interviews with 31 Catholic priests, Harvey shows how they are polarized along generational lines into two groups he terms “Total Identity Priests” and “Plural Identity Priests.” The existing conservative or liberal attitudes of these groups (respectively) - such as opposing or favoring women’s ordination - are shown to be maintained through priests’ everyday forms of identity work. This identity work - including wearing the clerical collar constantly, or only when “on duty” - serves to summarize, communicate, and reinforce priests’  personal identities, which in turn reinforces their existing attitudes to women’s ordination.