Catholic Infrastructures

In Catholic Infrastructures, Ethan Copple examines the often-unseen systems that sustain Catholic life. Drawing on ethnographic research with priests in the American Midwest, comparative observations from Spain and Guatemala, and reflections on the impact of digital technologies, the book argues that Catholicism is not held together by belief alone, but by infrastructures that organize time, authority, ritual, and community.

At the center of this inquiry is the Catholic priesthood. Through close attention to the daily lives of priests, Copple shows how priests function as a form of human infrastructure, enabling sacramental life, maintaining institutional coherence, and mediating between doctrine and lived practice. When priestly infrastructure is strained or absent, Catholic life does not simply disappear. It adapts, fragments, and takes on new forms.

The book also considers how digital technologies intersect with these longstanding structures, reshaping parish life, authority, and presence without replacing the embodied work of priests and communities. Rather than offering prescriptions or reforms, Catholic Infrastructures provides a framework for understanding how Catholicism persists, changes, and endures through the maintenance and breakdown of its underlying systems.

This volume will be of interest to readers in anthropology, religious studies, and Catholic studies, as well as anyone concerned with how institutions function in an increasingly digitally mediated world.