21/05/2024 14:15 - 16:30

HALL: FATESI - MARCATAJO

Proponent: Faggioli M., Froehle B.

Chair: Froehle B.

Speaker: Bosschaert D., Deflem L., Faggioli M., Froehle B., Harris A., Ott T.J., Servaas M.

The dynamic of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy has played out in globally recognizable and highly damaging ways through repeated cycles of denials, cover-ups, revelations, feeble responses, and (at times) stronger responses. This is a unique kind of crisis: not singular but on-going. In this way it lends itself to a deeper interrogation of Global Catholicism itself, simultaneously centralized and decentralized. Revelations of abuse continue to emerge in different parts of the world under different legal and cultural pressures. This marks a very different religious reality than one characterized by an historic pattern of hyper-concentration and hyper-centralization in Europe. The February 2019 summit of the presidents of national bishops' conferences in Rome illustrated this shift, but what are its fruits? How has the contours of global Catholicism shifted in terms of safeguarding and reporting policies, investigations, and scholarship on the subject? This is a local and global question all at once, and this is part of what makes Global Catholicism a unique field of scholarship. The churches in different countries and continents react differently, following different theological, ecclesiological, and legal-cultural frames. What kinds of comparisons may be drawn? How effective have the responses been? What are the deeper theological, ecclesiological, and comparative religious implications? What can we learn about Global Catholicism from this reality?