The Resolution of Role Conflict Among Clergymen.

In the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council, the pastoral role of the Catholic priest has become the focus of rather extensive conflict as various individuals and groups come to hold varying, and often incompatible, expectations of incumbents. Earlier approaches to this sort of role conflict attempted to explain modes of conflict resolution mainly by refers awe to factors located either in the personality or the social system. Such studies have seldom been successfully replicated. In this paper, however, modes of conflict resolution among diocesan clergy are amined from the perspective of reference group theory-particularly in the context of the ongoing relationship between priest and bishop. Findings are reported concerning the rather complex structure of the self other systems of clergymen and how it functions in the resolution of role conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]