Organizational Change in the Roman Catholic Church : the Marriage Preparation Policy as Case Study

The struggle to maintain a traditional religious belief system in a secular world has fascinated sociologists since Durkheim delineated the sacred/profane distinction. Using the development of a state-wide marriage preparation policy for Roman Catholics in Louisiana as a case study, this paper examines the struggle within the Roman Catholic Church to maintain the concept of the sacramental marriage when confronted with an increased secular acceptance of divorce. The authors suggest that the concept « religious reconstruction » introduced by Seidler (1986) provides an appropriate vehicle for understanding a change that has occured within the Roman Catholic Church