With the assistance of ten students and six priests over a period of 12 months, the head of the department of sociology at Loyola University of the South conducted a field study of the social actions of parishioners and clergy in a single Roman Catholic Church unit in the city of New Orleans. The methodology and conceptual framework of the analysis of action within the context of the social institution, viewed structurally and functionally, have been magnificently adhered to. Religious actions, conceived as such by the actors and by others who interpret their behavior, are the substance of this study in parochial sociology. Data were collected by patient observation of the many aspects of the detailed religious patterns of action in which Roman Catholics engage. These are, among others, the typical and atypical behavior associated with church attendance, the sacraments, retreats, missions, recruitment for the priesthood, special devotions and feast-days, and the observances relating to baptism, matrimony and death.