Past Events

Black Communities and the Clerical Abuse Crisis

April 21, 2021

This conversation was the fourth in a series of four on historically marginalized U.S. communities and the abuse crisis.

Panelists

Tia Noelle Pratt, PhD (panelist) is a sociologist of religion specializing in systemic racism in the Catholic Church.  She is the Director of Mission Engagement and Strategic Initiatives at Villanova University. She received her PhD in Sociology from Fordham University in 2010.  For more than twenty years, Dr. Pratt has researched and written about how systemic racism impacts African-American Catholic identity. She is the curator of the #BlackCatholicsSyllabus, an outgrowth of her academic work. Dr. Pratt is currently working on a book, Faithful and Devoted: Racism and Identity in the African-American Catholic Experience. Her work has been featured in the edited volumes Young American Catholics and American Parishes, as well as Faithfully, Commonweal, The Revealer, and America.

Bryan Massingale, S.T.D. (panelist) is professor of theological and social ethics and the James and Nancy Buckman Chair in Applied Christian Ethics at Fordham University. He is a priest of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. His most recent book, Racial Justice and the Catholic Church, received a First Place Book Award from the Catholic Press Association of the U.S. and Canada. He also contributes to major Catholic thought vehicles such as US Catholic, Commonweal, America Magazine, and the National Catholic Reporter. His current writing projects explore the contributions of Black radicalism to Catholic theology and the intersections of race, sexuality, and faith. He has also been a frequent public commentator on issues related to the clerical abuse crisis, among many other topics.

Rev. Manuel B. Williams, C.R., Th.M. (panelist) is Director of Resurrection Catholic Missions of the South, Inc. and Pastor of Resurrection Catholic Church in Montgomery, Alabama. In addition to Fr. Williams' extensive service on the boards of national and local organizations, he also preaches revivals and missions throughout the U.S., specializing in African-American Catholic spirituality and history. He is an adjunct instructor at the Institute for Black Catholic Studies (IBCS) at Xavier University New Orleans, and served as Co-Director for IBCS from 2017-2019.

Asian/Pacific Islander American Communities and the Clerical Abuse Crisis

March 25, 2021

This conversation was the third in a series of four on historically marginalized U.S. communities and the abuse crisis.

Panelists

Linh Hoang OFM, Ph.D. (panelist) is a Professor of Religious Studies at Siena College in New York. He is a Franciscan priest with the Holy Name Province. He has published articles in the areas of Asian American Catholics, race, migration and theology, historical theology, religion, and inter-generational religious experience. His book Rebuilding Religious Experience: Vietnamese Refugees in America was published in 2007. His textbook Experiences of the Sacred was published in 2020. He has blogged for the online site popularcultureandtheology. He is currently serving as a consultant to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) on Asian and Pacific Islander Catholics.

Eunice Park, MTS/MAMC (panelist) is a Korean American pastoral minister in the San Francisco Bay Area. She received her Master's degrees in Theology and in Ministry from the Franciscan School of Theology, and her Bachelors degree from UC Berkeley. She has worked in Asian Pacific Islander ministry on local and national levels, having sat on both the Consultative Committee for API Ministry for the Secretariat of Diversity and the Ad Hoc Advisory Group for the Subcommittee on API Affairs for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. She was also previously on the Steering Committee for the National API Catholic Conference and is currently in the Ministry Leader Advisory Group for Journeying Together, the national intercultural encounter for young adult ministry.

Rachel Bundang, Ph.D. (moderator/panelist) is a Catholic feminist ethicist. Presently based in the Bay Area, she teaches as Religious Studies faculty at Sacred Heart Cathedral in San Francisco and the Graduate Program for Pastoral Ministries faculty at Santa Clara University. She has written multiple articles and book chapters and additionally serves on the editorial team for Theological Studies. A founding member of the Asian Pacific American Religious Research Initiative (APARRI), her areas of interest lie at the intersections of race, feminisms, technology, inequality, and Catholic social teaching. In her ministerial life, she is also active as a lay preacher/presider, musician, and retreat leader.

Native American Communities and the Clerical Abuse Crisis

February 26, 2021

This conversation was the second in a series of four on historically marginalized U.S. communities and the abuse crisis.

Panelists

Jack Downey, Ph.D. (moderator) is associate professor of Religion and Classics, and John Henry Newman Professor in Roman Catholic Studies, at the University of Rochester. He is the author of The Bread of the Strong: Lacouturisme and the Folly of the Cross, 1910-1985 (Fordham University Press, 2015), and is working on a history of the Catholic Church in Alaska.

Denise K. Lajimodiere, Ph.D. (speaker) is an enrolled Citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, Belcourt, North Dakota. She has been involved in education for forty-four years as an elementary teacher, principal, and professor, earning her Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Doctorate degrees from University of North Dakota. Dr. Lajimodiere is a retired Associate Professor from the School of Education, Ed. Leadership program, North Dakota State University, Fargo. She is one of the founders of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition (N-NABS-HC). Denise is a poet – Dragonfly Dance; Thunderbird; Bitter Tears; His Feathers Were Chains (Oct. 2020) -- children’s book author, Josie Dances (in press, 2021) -- and academic book author, Stringing Rosaries: The History, The Unforgivable, The Healing of Northern Plains Boarding School Survivors (2019). Denise is a traditional Jingle Dress dancer, Ojibwe Birch Bark Biting artist, and lives in a cozy cottage by a lake on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation.

Kathleen Holscher, Ph.D. (panelist) is associate professor of American Studies and Religious Studies, and holds the endowed chair in Roman Catholic Studies, at the University of New Mexico. She is the author of Religious Lessons: Catholic Sisters and the Captured Schools Crisis in New Mexico (Oxford University Press, 2012).

Latinx Communities and the Clerical Abuse Crisis

January 28, 2021

This conversation was the first in a series of four on historically marginalized U.S. communities and the abuse crisis.

Panelists

J.D. Long-García (moderator and panelist) is a Senior Editor at America Media, and has worked as a journalist covering the Catholic Church since 2004. His recent writings for America include "The Wrong People Are in Charge of Protecting Our Children from Sexual Abuse" (November 2020, on the McCarrick Report) and "Is There a Sexual Abuse Reckoning Coming for the Latino Church?" (August 2018.)

Damellys Sacriste (panelist), a native of Venezuela, is the faith formation and education coordinator at the Catholic Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Atlanta, Georgia and the Hispanic outreach coordinator for the Aquinas Center at the Candler School of Theology, Emory University.

Dr. Susan Bigelow Reynolds (panelist) is assistant professor of Catholic Studies at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University. An ecclesiologist, she has done extensive research in Latinx parishes, including, most recently, on clergy abuse in undocumented immigrant communities. She also serves on her parish’s task force to address the clergy sexual abuse crisis.

The McCarrick Report: Findings, Lessons, Directions

December 10, 2020

On November 10, 2020, the Vatican released its long-awaited report on the rise of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick within the Catholic Church. This unprecedented 459-page account revealed major institutional, cultural, and personal failures that led to immense suffering for victim-survivors of clergy sexual abuse and terrible damage to the Church. One month later, the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown University and the Taking Responsibility: Jesuit Institutions Confront the Causes and Legacy of Clergy Sexual Abuse initiative at Fordham University co-sponsored an online dialogue to look at the report’s most important findings, lessons it holds, and future directions in continuing to confront the clergy sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church.

Panelists

John Carr is the director of the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown University. For over 25 years he served at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. He wrote in America about the lessons he had learned from his experience of clergy sexual abuse and his work with the U.S. bishops, including McCarrick.

Juan Carlos Cruz is an executive in Philadelphia. A survivor of clergy sexual abuse in Chile, he was first disbelieved and later welcomed to the Vatican by Pope Francis to share his experience and recommendations. He is widely seen as a key figure who challenged Pope Francis to take decisive action on clergy sexual abuse as a global crisis.

David Gibson is the director of the Center on Religion and Culture at Fordham University. He is a former national reporter for Religion News Service where he specialized in coverage of the Vatican and the Catholic Church, and he covered McCarrick for decades, including a recent article in Commonweal.

Kathleen Sprows Cummings is the director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism and a professor in the Department of American Studies and Department of History at the University of Notre Dame. She is the author of A Saint of Our Own: How the Quest for a Holy Hero Helped Catholics Become American (2019) and New Women of the Old Faith: Gender and American Catholicism in the Progressive Era (2009).

Bradford E. Hinze, who will moderate the dialogue, is the Karl Rahner, S.J., Professor of Theology at Fordham University, and the project director for the initiative “Taking Responsibility: Jesuit Institutions Confront the Causes and Legacy of Clergy Sexual Abuse,” a joint project of the Curran Center for the Study of American Catholicism and the Theology Department at Fordham.

This online Public Dialogue is co-sponsored by the Taking Responsibility Initiative at Fordham University and the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown University.