In A Matter of Discretion, Calfano, Michelson, and Oldmixon begin with the question, “how exactly do clergy — and Roman Catholic priests in particular — choose the political acts and attitudes associated with their role” (3)? The authors posit that priests use their room for discretion to strike positions that strategically balance their own views and those of competing reference groups, in order to achieve professional security and effectiveness. Evidence comes from original online surveys of American and Irish priests and a field experiment analyzing U.S. (United States) priests’ e-mailed responses to a question from a fictional parishioner.

The book draws from a wealth of data on reasonably large national samples of Catholic priests. Survey data show tendencies among priests in such matters as perceptions of job stress and satisfaction, opinions and perceptions regarding discussion of public policy issues, assessments of “religious institutions,” sources of guidance in interpreting church teaching and rules, partisanship and ideology, opinions on select social issues, and overall political participation. The field experiment reveals the content and tone of priests’ answers regarding whether someone can receive communion at Mass if she supports abortion rights.

The authors devote the bulk of the analysis, however, to whether assignment to various experimental conditions affects priests’ responses to most of the questions above. In the survey, these conditions prompt “cognitive reflection” on either job stress and satisfaction or on anticipated reactions of bishops and parishioners to priests’ discussion of public policy. In the field experiment, the authors try to prime thinking about the views of bishops, parishioners, or both. This emphasis makes the book read more like a study on the mechanisms of opinion formation than a substantive investigation of “the politics of Catholic priests.”

Readers interested in such theoretical matters will find much to admire in this book. It presents rigorous social scientific research that is carefully grounded in relevant literature and theory, methodologically innovative, and proficiently executed. Its comparative element is a bonus. Commendably, the authors integrate their study of clergy with broader scholarship on public administration and public opinion. The authors, for example, liken priests to “local political elites” and “street-level bureaucrats.” They expect (and find) that some of priests’ opinions and behaviors can be moved by priming certain considerations. Between its contribution to theory on clergy politics and some empirical puzzles left unsolved, this book should spark substantial subsequent research.

Readers seeking rich description of Catholic priests’ political worldviews or insight into priests’ real-world involvement in policy and politics may be somewhat disappointed. I waited in vain for the book to assess experimental findings’ concrete implications. Descriptive statistics rarely included measures of variation. Further, some key data do not explicitly concern public policy, but rather other beliefs or aspects of priests’ ministries. The communion question would be more useful, for example, if accompanied by argument about what answers (and the differences the authors also look for while manipulating the parishioner's ethnicity) should be expected to reveal about priests’ political attitudes and engagement.

The book also misses opportunities to address some big questions that scholars and the educated public are likely to be curious about when picking up a new book on the politics of (U.S.) priests. Catholic social teaching implies policy stances that cut across existing American partisan cleavages, yet American politics is increasingly polarized by party and Catholics largely behave like other partisans. Given that, I wanted to know how priests combine policy positions, and how these combinations relate as independent or dependent variables to partisanship, ideology, levels and mixes of political activity, and perceptions of bishop and parishioner reactions to priests’ engagement of policy issues. I wondered how priests navigate partisan tensions and whether they behave as cross-pressured voters are predicted to. Since they seem to have the data and expertise to do it, I selfishly hope that the authors will next write such a book.

A Matter of Discretion’s reading level is geared toward graduate students and professional academics. Though the authors write in clear language, chapters in which they analyze their survey data demand much of the reader. This is especially the case in chapter 5, where the text races through reams of structural equation models of scenarios in which experimental frame exposure shapes priests’ sources of cues in applying church teaching which in turn shape priests’ attitudes. This pace burdens the reader substantially in terms of interpreting results and looking for other potentially interesting relationships in the data. The chapter also feels repetitive, as the same types of detailed statistical tables and figures are presented separately, in tandem, for U.S. and Irish priests for nine different dependent variables. On the other hand, portions of the book that include samples of priests’ e-mails and clarifying comments appended to the survey will likely engage and enrich a wider readership.

The book concludes that priests’ political attitudes and behavior are (1) affected by reference group frames, (2) largely consistent with church teaching where teaching is clearest but more varied where church teaching is less clear, and (3) influenced especially by bishops but also by parishioners (155). The authors also observe “a noticeable trend” in priests “responding in a sympathetic or pastoral manner” to a pro-choice parishioner, even while unwavering in their pro-life views (162). A logical next step for research concerns the substantive direction(s) in which the positions of reference groups move Catholic priests. This book unfortunately offers no clear story line on this, which I attribute partly to analytical design but also partly to the authors’ faithful reporting of their results, some of which differ across questions, across treatments, between the Irish and American samples, and between the survey and field experiments.

Despite my complaints about omitted applied material, A Matter of Discretion is a fine and thought-provoking scholarly book on opinion formation and some slices of the pastoral work of Catholic priests.