Roman Catholics in Central Minnesota
 Map of Roman Catholics by county in the United States [source]  Roman Catholic villages in Central Minnesota (1:100,000 map)
 Map of Germans by county in the United States  Close-up of a Roman Catholic village (1:24,000 map)

The Roman Catholic Church in the United States has 34 metropolitan provinces run by archbishops, containing 196 archdioceses and dioceses managed by 270 bishops. These are further divided into 17,958 parishes run by 39,466 priests and 16,921 married deacons.

 

 St. Johns University and College of St. Benedict (1:24,000 maps)

 

 

 

Do Roman Catholics put up more or fewer religious landscape icons where they predominate in an area?
To answer this question, I randomly sampled three townships in Stearns County (red circle), where the largest concentration of Roman Catholics in Minnesota are located, within each of three spatial types:
1) the core with over 69 percent Catholics of the total population,
2) the domain with between 69 and 30 percent Catholics, and
3) the sphere with less than 30 percent Catholics.
The number and kind of shrines, e.g., Mary in the bathtub, crosses, religious statutes, etc., were counted in each of the three areas.

Here are the results:

Type of Shrine

Core
(>69%)*

Domain
(69-30%)*

Sphere
(<30 %)*

public, on church grounds

10

1

0

private, built-up area (e.g., in villages)

24

2

0

private, in the open countryside

23

12

0

total

57

15

0

Source: Based on Vogeler's field work in the 1970s. * = percent Roman Catholics

So, what is the answer to the question?

 

Created by Ingolf Vogeler on 1 February 1996; last revised on 29 August, 2012.