Mass Exodus: Catholic Disaffiliation in Britain and America since Vatican II
Stephen Bullivant
Oxford University Press
336 pages
$32.95 hardback, $24.99 e-book
If you want to start a heated debate in Catholic circles, just state an opinion about the Second Vatican Council’s impact on attrition rates in the modern Church. While many implicate Vatican II as the cause of millions of people leaving the Church, on the other extreme are those who blame societal changes for the exodus, absolving the Council of all responsibility.
Stephen Bullivant takes a well researched, comprehensive look at this debate in his book, Mass Exodus: Catholic Disaffiliation in Britain and America since Vatican II (Oxford University Press: 2019). To skip to his conclusion, Bullivant essentially says that both extremes are wrong…and right.