Praying the Rosary

Praying the Rosary: The Anal-Erotic Origins of a Popular Catholic Devotion, by Michael P. Carroll, was published in the December 1987 issue of the JSSR. The article provoked quite alot of negative response from readers of the journal, some of whom directly challenged the editor's judgment in accepting the article for publication. I might simply have decided to ignore these voices of protest, but I have chosen instead to explore the letter writers' concerns with the author. He readily agreed to my proposal that we explore these issues in an interview format, and here is the result. I am mindful of the fact that some readers who protested our publication of the original article will question the editors' judgment, once again, for devoting additional pages of the journal to this topic. But I believe that some significant issues regarding the nature and objectives of the scientific study of religion have been raised by the response to Michael Carroll's article, and, even more so, by this own response to the questions I put to him. Michael P. Carroll is professor of sociology at the University of Western Ontario. In addition to his book, The Cult of the Virgin Mary (Princeton University Press, 1986), he has published some fifty articles in sociological, anthropological and psychoanalytic journals. Structuralist and psychoanalytic analyses of myths, folklore and contemporary urban culture are his primary specialty

Theology · Mormonism, Religion, and History · Philosophy · Religion and Society Interactions · Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices

• American Psychology of Religion and the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion

  Open Access•Ralph W Hood•Journal for the Scientific Study…•2000

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