Abstract
Relatively low levels of religious involvement concern not only religious leaders and religious people, but also many community leaders and heads of voluntary organizations. By the standards of four measures of religious involvement or commitment, measured from the results of Statistics Canada's National Survey of Giving, Volunteering, and Participating, francophone Catholics seem relatively uninvolved compared with anglophone Catholics and affiliates with other faiths. Yet it is only the francophone Catholics in Quebec who have low rates of commitment. A comparison of francophone Catholics in Quebec with those in the rest of Canada, and with anglophone Catholics, reveals that some groups are especially uncommitted: the unusually low commitment of parents and professionals in French Catholic Quebec compared with anglophone Catholics seems most problematic. A closer look at "influential" professions reveals that anglophone Catholic teachers are twice as likely to say they are religious as francophone Catholic teachers in Quebec, medical professionals are almost twice as likely, and managers are two and one half times as likely. An analysis of the frequency of churchgoing by Catholic women and men reveals that for both sexes attendance is more frequent among anglophone and non-Quebec francophone Catholics than among francophone Catholics in Quebec, after considering the effect of a number of other variables on attendance. The study concludes with some suggestions for future research.