The Project:
Common Track
Joint Consultations of the Commonweal Foundation and the Faith
& Reason Institute
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Consultations on Catholics in the Public Square
The project will jointly hold three two-day
consultations examining facets of Catholic participation in the
public square. The
first two will have approximately 35 participants at each; the
third will be a weekend conference with 40-50 invited
participants, including prominent speakers, and open to a wider
audience estimated at 200 or more.
- The
Patterns of Catholic Civic Engagement: Change and Continuity.
This will be the theme of the project’s initial two-day
consultation, to be held in the spring of 2000.
The gathering will examine the history of the Catholic
presence in American public life, focusing on both its
national patterns and regional differences.
It will examine the history of Catholic social thought
and how it has informed Catholic civic engagement, on the one
hand, and also how it has been challenged and even reshaped by
the American political experiment and dynamic culture, on the
other. The
conference will survey some of the current expressions of
organized Catholic civic engagement and some of the
contemporary obstacles to a greater Catholic presence in the
public square.
-
The
Transmission of the Catholic Social Tradition.
This will be the theme of the project’s second-year
two-day consultation, to be held in the spring of 2001.
It will examine how the Catholic tradition is being
transmitted in a variety of institutions, from grade schools
and religious education to graduate programs, from preaching
in parishes to the bishops’ conferences, activist groups,
professional and lay associations, and especially the
church’s liturgy and prayer life. At least one session will consider the issues that have
certainly gone far to define the church’s public presence in
the mind of many citizens, both Catholic and non-Catholic:
abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide.
How have the church’s positions on these issues been
conveyed to Catholics and projected into the public square
generally_ Because
of the life-and-death significance of many of these issues,
and their consequent resistance to compromise, they play a
crucial role in shaping the political stances of church
leaders and many active Catholics, deeply affecting their mood
of moral urgency, their sense of being at home or alienated in
the public square, their choice of political rhetoric, and
their preferences or conflicts in forming alliances or
coalitions.
-
Catholics
in the Public Square: Proposals for the Future.
This will be the theme of a concluding consultation, in fact
an open conference, held in the late spring or early fall of
2002. It will
involve many participants from the earlier consultations and
colloquia (see below); and, drawing on other work supported by
the Pew Trusts, it will give needed attention to the Hispanic
presence in American Catholicism.
The gathering will feature prominent speakers, and it
will be promoted to a wider audience, potentially of several
hundred. This
gathering will synthesize or, when necessary, simply juxtapose
conclusions arising not only from the studies commissioned for
the events above but also for the series of seminars or
colloquia organized separately by the Faith and Reason
Institute in Washington and by the Commonweal Foundation in
New York, cooperating with the Cushwa Center at Notre Dame.
From Pews to Polling Booths:
How Catholics Vote.
This will be the theme of
a comprehensive examination of the ways that Catholic beliefs and
social commitments translate into political behavior.
This effort will involve reanalyzing existing research and
commissioning some new surveys.
We hope to answer some questions never before carefully
studied: How do
Catholics think about public issues; what are the sources –
familial, parish, co
mmunity, formal educational – that shape their participation in
the public square and how are these elements of Catholic identity
translated into civic practice.
This htmlect of the project is intended to dig deeply behind
the familiar findings about Catholic voting patterns.
It will deliberately take advantage of the election cycle
in the year 2000 to stir discussion and draw attention to the
wider concerns of the project.
We propose to engage CARA (Center for Applied Research in
the Apostolate), an experienced polling organization affiliated
with Georgetown University, to carry out focus-group and survey
research in the fall and winter of 1999-2000.
The Commonweal Foundation and Faith and Reason Institute
will establish an advisory committee of experts to provide
guidance in the planning and execution of this research. Findings will be publicized at a Washington press conference
in June or July of the presidential election year. A post-election event enlisting commentators familiar with
the Catholic factor in politics, such as E. J. Dionne, Mark
Shields, and Michael Barone, would compare the survey findings and
election results – and further stimulate discussion of the
Catholic presence in the public square.
- 2000
-
2002
- Fall:
Catholics
in the Public Square: Proposals for the Future
The Tracks:
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