Organizing and the Revitalization of American Catholicism

Authors

Richard L. Wood, Inst for Advanced Catholic Studies @ USC and the University of New MexicoFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Summer 9-15-2024

Abstract

American Catholicism today struggles to sustain its longtime character as a truly “public religion”—that is, a religious tradition with a vital presence within the public sphere in the US. Reinvigorating Catholicism in the US will require both internal renewal and new approaches to public life, both of which will require continuity with the deep tradition and significant reorientation of ecclesial dynamics. This paper argues that specific, faith-based community-organizing practices can help renew the public voice of Catholicism. In adopting such practices and inflecting them through Catholic commitment to theologically coherent processes of leadership formation, American Catholicism can reinvigorate parish life and play a crucial role in reconstructing democracy in the US for a multiracial and multifaith society in the twenty-first century and beyond.

Publication Title

Journal of Catholic Social Thought

Volume

21

Issue

2

First Page

398

Last Page

418

DOI

https://doi.org/10.5840/jcathsoc202421224]

Language (ISO)

English

Sponsorship

Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies at the University of Southern California

Keywords

Keywords Public Catholicism, community organizing, synodality, democracy, Catholic renewal

Recommended Citation

Richard L. Wood. 2024. “Organizing and the Revitalization of American Catholicism,” in Journal of Catholic Social Thought 21(2):398-418

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Comments

Published version in the Journal of Catholic Social Thought is downloadable at https://doi.org/10.5840/jcathsoc202421224]