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AbstractThis article seeks to review recent research and scholarship in the sociology of Catholicism, as well as focusing on areas needing greater attention. In taking stock of this literature, I identify institutional change, church‐society interactions, institutional resources and influence, and the church as international actor as four key topics that have engaged scholarship. I review existing research under each, as well as highlighting gaps and blind spots that invite further inquiry of this specific religious group.

Using case pattern analysis, this study examines Catholic male workforce trends in the majority Catholic countries of Chile, Ireland, and Poland. Employing denominational data for three categories of church male professionals in the 1950–2010 time period, I document four important trends. First, ordinations to the diocesan priesthood in Ireland went into decline especially after Vatican II, have been relatively stable in Chile with only a moderate increase in the 1990s, and spiked in Poland in the 1980s, 20 years after Vatican II. Second, in all three countries the average defection rate among diocesan seminarians increased in the 2000s compared with the earlier two decades. Third, the religious priest workforce has declined in Chile, has been relatively stable in Ireland until the 2000s, and is growing in Poland. Fourth, from the late 1960s there has been a decline in the workforce of religious brothers in each country, especially in Ireland. The theoretical contribution to the Catholic workforce literature is discussed in terms of a critical events argument emphasizing the impact of Vatican II, prophetic stances, sexual scandals, and papal visits on labor market trends. I conclude with implications for the study of religion and society in general.

Using a comparative-historical framework, this article examines how religious organizational responses to a shared stigmatizing scandal, arising from the sexual abuse of children by church personnel, differ across diverse locales – Ireland, South Africa, and the United States – of a single religious tradition, in this case the Roman Catholic Church. Drawing on previous literature, I identify three perspectives related to responses to sexual scandal in organized religious institutions: strategic self-presentation, lay activism, and church–media relations. Focusing on the Catholic episcopal conferences in the three settings and relying on an analysis of national-level bishops' discourses and practices in the 1988–2013 time span, I find that Catholic legitimations predominate, but appeals to Catholic discourses are more frequent in South Africa than in Ireland and the United States; lay mobilization exerts a partial influence on scandal responses even in contexts providing sociopolitical space for activism from below; and external accountability is influenced by media organizations, but differently so, in all three contexts. Implications for religion and society in general are discussed.