Conference and congresses.

This article reports on the 8th International Conference of Religious Sociology in Barcelona, Spain, on July 2-4, 1965. The theme for the conference is Religion in the Transition From a Pre-Technical to an Industrial and Urban Society. Though the theme of this conference was explicitly defined, only three of the seven papers read to the assembly were directly concerned with the subject. Professor Kirk's contribution treating the role of religion in the evolution of the American South, can perhaps best be seen as a statement about the hindrances religion can put in the way of socioeconomic change, about religion as a conservative factor. Lord Simey reminded us of the professional obligations of the sociologist of religion, and though there was no direct relation to the main subject of the conference, it was important to have him ask this question, especially in this group of sociologists who are primarily working within a Church context. This became clear when Mr. Spencer decided to devote his presidential address to the subject of professional ethics of the sociologist of religion. As for the last speaker, Fr. Greeley, we were only too glad to have the president of the American Catholic Sociological Society with us and thus to see emerge the possibility of a closer contact and cooperation with American confréres, to mind much that his paper dealing with social successes of American Catholic Education, was in no way related to the conference theme.