Project Goals

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The Catholic church is the largest single religious body in the United States, numbering over 60 million adherents, nearly one-quarter of the American population (two-fifths of all religious adherents), as many as the next ten organized religious groups combined. In addition, the church’s own structure is quite complex, including international, national, state, and local institutions, as well as educational, health care, and social service agencies. Independent, often lay-inspired organizations also play an active role in a variety of ways across the political and social spectrum, from established fraternal and service associations like the Knights of Columbus to activist lobbying groups such as Network. Catholic parishes affect the public realm through their pastoral activities, soup kitchens or shelters, support for immigrants or refugees, and simply by inculcating civic virtues through homilies, educational efforts, sacramental life, and congregational action. Individual Catholics engage the society as voters, political activists, charitable volunteers, participants in community groups, professionals, employees, employers, and union members.

Getting a more accurate and comprehensive picture of Catholic activity in the public square will be the first order of business and will continue throughout the project, Investigations are needed:

To identify the distinctive elements in a Catholic approach to civic life; to explore the strengths and weaknesses of this tradition in the American context; to discover how (and how successfully) this tradition is being transmitted; to identify obstacles within the Catholic church itself and the Catholic community to a more robust and distinctive Catholic presence in the public square; and to analyze both receptivity and resistances in the larger American culture to the Catholic presence.
To generate concrete analyses and recommendations for strengthening Catholic civic engagement – not in an attempt to devise a platform or simple formulas, but simply as a way to gather a range of ideas about current practices and imaginative possibilities that Catholic leaders in various spheres can evaluate, adapt, adopt, or discard as they see fit.
To encompass a broad spectrum of political and social views of Catholics so as to encourage dialogue between sectors of a large and diverse church who often do not come into significant contact with one another and to open up lines of inquiry that will capture the attention of Catholic leaders, religious and secular media, and political thinkers in a way that could extend the discussion well beyond this project.
To reexamine the long-standing Catholic belief in obligation to promote the common good and to clarify how Catholics may work better with those holding other religious or philosophical convictions toward revitalizing both the religious environment and civic participation in the American republic.