Roman Catholics in Central Minnesota
 Map of Roman Catholics by U.S. counties  Roman Catholic villages in Central Minnesota (1:100,000 scale)
 Map of Germans by U. S. counties  Close-up of a Roman Catholic village (1:24,000 scale)
   St. Johns University and College of St. Benedict (1:24,000 scale)


The Roman Catholic Church in the United States has 34 metropolitan provinces run by archbishops, containing 196 archdioceses and dioceses managed by 270 bishops. These are further divided into 17,958 parishes run by 39,466 priests and 16,921 married deacons.

Do Roman Catholics put up more or fewer religious landscape icons where they predominate in an area?
To answer this question, I randomly sampled three townships in Stearns County (red circle), where the largest concentration of Roman Catholics in Minnesota are located. Each township represented three spatial types:
1) core with over 69 percent Catholics of the total population,
2) domain with between 69 and 30 percent Catholics, and
3) sphere with less than 30 percent Catholics.
The number and kind of shrines, e.g., Mary in the bathtub, crosses, religious statutes, etc., were counted in each of the three areas.

Here are the results:

Type of Shrine

Core
(>69%)*

Domain
(69-30%)*

Sphere
(<30 %)*

public, on church grounds

10

1

0

private, built-up area (e.g., in villages)

24

2

0

private, in the open countryside

23

12

0

total

57

15

0

Source: Based on Vogeler's field work in the 1970s. * = percent Roman Catholics

What is the answer to the question above?