Soon after World War II, partly in response to a serious housing shortage in the cities, Catholics joined millions of other Americans—Jews, Protestants of various denominations, nonbelievers—in relocating to the newly built suburbs. The typical parish plant (the cluster of church, rectory, convent, gymnasium and school), diocese administrative offices and priests, and monsignors, nuns and bishops followed Catholic families closely behind. While suburban Catholic parishes existed before this, they were few and small and would have to multiply and expand to serve a rapidly growing laity. 

Crabgrass Catholicism

by Stephen M. Koeth

University of Chicago Press
336p $30

Focusing on Long Island, in New York, Stephen Koeth, an assistant professor of history at the University of Notre Dame, documents in Crabgrass Catholicism the institutional adjustments that occurred as once-urban Catholic families took up suburban living. 

Between 1952 and 1980, the proportion of Catholics living in U.S. cities fell from approximately one-half to one-quarter, according to Koeth, while the suburban share rose from one-third to one-half. The Catholic population in Detroit declined from approximately 1 million to 100,000, in Baltimore from 150,000 to 33,000, and in San Francisco from 120,000 to 47,000 over those years. In New York City, the archdiocese lost over 160,000 parishioners between 1940 and 1970, almost all of whom left for nearby suburbs.  

The church hierarchy and the laity worked separately and together to draw new parish boundaries, build churches, construct and manage schools and maintain Catholic values. Because families were young, having babies and raising small children, building schools and organizing catechism classes to pass the faith to the next generation were of special importance. The extraordinary adaptations made by the church led to the newly designated Archdiocese of Rockville Center being touted as “a prototype of the suburban church.” 

What most interests Koeth and serves as the focal point of this deeply researched and thoughtful history are the consequences that suburbanization had for the practice of Catholicism. Looming large in his story are the reforms of the Second Vatican Council in 1962-65.

Koeth’s argument centers on how the sizable increase in the number of Catholics overwhelmed existing and newly formed suburban parishes. The church simply could not provide priests, nuns, churches, schools and religious programming quickly enough or of sufficient magnitude to meet demand. The resultant shifting of church services, matrimonial counseling and catechism classes from the public space of the church to the private spaces of the home undermined the devotional ethos. To compensate for the deficit of priests and nuns, the laity was given more responsibility in church affairs, dramatically altering, in Koeth’s words, “the balance of power between clergy and laity.” 

To this Koeth adds the geographic dispersal of Catholic families, in stark contrast to urban parishes, and the intermingling of families of various faiths that increased intermarriage across ethnic lines. As Catholics socialized more in secular settings, religion became less of a social marker. The institutional and associational relations that had previously anchored Catholic life weakened.

In addition, Catholics were experiencing a society in turmoil. As in many Western European nations, the United States was undergoing unprecedented economic growth, its welfare state was expanding, public engagement with social justice was on the rise, and young people were rebelling against puritanical norms. Vatican II was paralleled by the rise of the social activism of the civil rights movement, women’s liberation and antiwar protests. One consequence was that many nuns opted to work with anti-poverty and other social service agencies, thereby depriving the parochial schools of low-cost religious teachers. 

Many suburban families were first-time homeowners, and their local municipalities needed increased tax revenues to build public schools and roads, to fund police and fire departments, and to operate libraries. The burden of real estate taxes made it more difficult for these families to afford Catholic school tuition, while both the demands and the attractions of suburban living lessened time for church activities. 

For Koeth, the relaxation of religious ties and the church’s struggles to accommodate parishioners with suburban lifestyles were the grassroots origins of Vatican II. The liberalization launched from Rome, in effect, was not a sudden break in the continuity of Catholic worship but was instead recognition of changes already underway. The encouragement of interfaith dialogue and increased participation of the laity in the liturgy, as well as more use of scriptural readings, vernacular language and less physical separation between priest and congregants at Mass, were reforms new only in being officially endorsed. 

For many in the laity and the clergy as well, the reforms of Vatican II were unwelcome. They worried about secularization, materialism and the dilution of Catholic education. The “new” Catholic Church, in their view, exacerbated the threat that the feminist movement posed to the patriarchal family, was too tolerant of changing attitudes toward birth control and abortion, and accelerated the shift away from priestly authority. For such Catholics, the reforms brought about by the council were more anxiety-provoking than supportive. 

Combined with rising real estate taxes, these apprehensions drew many suburban Catholics to an anti-liberal politics that was increasingly in the grip of a white ethnic identity. Koeth notes, however, that the “ethnic revival of the late 1960s and 1970s and the Catholic revolt from the New Deal coalition were not principally driven by race consciousness or anti-black racism.” Rather, “the overriding concern of white ethnics and their advocates was economic,” involving tax increases and inflation. Nevertheless, the laity was now deeply divided ideologically between traditionalist and liberalizing trends.

In the historical framing that begins Crabgrass Catholicism, Koeth points out Catholic leadership’s centuries-long concern with where Catholics live. In the early 19th century, most Catholics in the United States resided in rural areas or small towns. With industrialization and late-19th and 20th-century immigration, Catholics congregated in cities. 

As anti-urbanism became more pronounced, the nation’s cities became viewed as places of vice, violence, secularization and individualism, and thus a threat to Catholic morality. Anti-urbanism also flared up in the postwar decades as the older cities became associated with large Black populations and racial unrest, poverty and crime. One response was migration to the suburbs. 

For some, suburbanization was itself a problem, undermining the ethnic neighborhood and parish, exposing Catholic families to consumerism, and dissolving Catholicism in an American citizenship that held religion at arm’s length. Today, this debate continues as commentators argue whether rural homesteading, urban living or suburban life best fits with the Catholic faith.

Koeth comes across as nostalgic for the immigrant church of the early 20th century. Then, many urban parishes were organized around national groups—Italians, Irish, Polish and more—that congregated in ethnic neighborhoods. The parish church and its lay organizations, like the Holy Name Society and the Legion of Mary, were centers of associational life and the church was institutionally strong. By contrast, new suburban parishes were territorial, not national. Parishioners were scattered across neighborhoods and towns, numerous secular associations (e.g., bowling leagues, library committees) competed for their time, and political opposition to taxes pulled suburbanites into the divisive politics of “big” government, race, youth culture and abortion. 

Because religion is always practiced somewhere, geography matters. The differences among and distinctiveness of places have much to do with how people worship and the accommodation that the church is subsequently compelled to make. The Catholic hierarchy was unable to fully serve its suburban congregants or replicate the cohesiveness of the urban parish. Koeth, though, is reluctant to pass judgment. Nevertheless, he makes a clear and convincing case that the church and Catholic laity understood what needed to be done—and that whatever failings occurred had less to do with the intensity of their commitment than with factors beyond their control. 

This article appears in March 2026.

Robert Beauregard is an emeritus professor at Columbia University and the author of Voices of Decline: The Postwar Fate of U.S. Cities and When America Became Suburban.