Governance, Accountability, and the Future of the Catholic Church

Francis Oakely is Edward Dorr Griffin Professor of the History of Ideas Emeritus at Williams College and President Emeritus of the College. He is also President Emeritus of the American Council of Learned Societies. He has held appointments at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, at the National Humanities Center, and at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. During the 1900-2000 academic year, he was the Sir Isaiah Berlin Visiting Professor in the History of Ideas at Oxford University. In 200l he gave the Merle Curti Lectures in intellectual history at the University of Wisconsin/Madison, and in 2002 the Gilson Lecture at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto. His most recent book, The Conciliarist Tradition: Constitutionalism in the Catholic Church, 1300-1870 (Oxford UP, 2003) won the Roland H. Bainton History Prize of the Sixteenth-Century Society. Among his other books are Omnipotence, Covenant, and Order, Politics and Eternity, and The Western Church in the Later Middle AgesIn March 2003 leading historians, theologians, journalists, social scientists, and foundation executives met together at the St. Thomas More Catholic Center at Yale University to examine the current crisis facing the Catholic Church. The conference was a first in the Center's history and indicative of the size and scope of a crisis unprecedented in the American Catholic Church, namely, the revelations of sexual abuse by priests and the hierarchy's complicity. The aim of the conference was to heal and strengthen the church through a deeper understanding of governance, leadership, and the roles of the laity and clergy. The findings and recommendations of this important conference are published here for the first time. Contributors include: John Beal, Francis Butler, Francine Cardman, Marcia Colish, Donald Cozzens, Gerald Fogarty, James Heft, Gerard Mannion, John McGreevy, Francis Oakley, Peter Phan, Thomas Reese, Bruce Russett, Peter Steinfels, Brian Tierney, and Donald W. Wuerl.Francis Oakley is Edward Dorr Griffin Professor of the History of Ideas and President Emeritus of Williams College and interim president of the American Council of Learned Societies. He is the author of numerous books including Politics and Eternity: Studies in the History of Medieval and Early Modern Political Thought.Bruce Russett is Dean Acheson Professor of International Relations and Political Science at Yale, Director of United Nations Studies at Yale, and past president of the International Studies Association and of the Peace Studies Society (International). He was principal advisor to the U.S. bishops in writing their 1983 "peace pastoral, " The Challenge of Peace.