This video is from the event "Catholic Perspectives on Religious Liberty," a symposium hosted by Georgetown University's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs. The event was held as part of the Religious Freedom Project, which is an interdisciplinary research project sponsored by the Luce Foundation.
September 13, 2012 | Since the Second Vatican Council the Church has placed considerable emphasis on the importance of religious freedom as a matter of human dignity and individual flourishing, and as central to a just and democratic society. Abroad, the persecution of Christians and others has reached significant, perhaps even crisis, proportions. At home, issues involving same-sex marriage, abortion, and contraception have sparked sharp controversy about threats to religious freedom, leading the US Conference of Catholic Bishops to establish its own committee to begin engaging these issues.
The Maryland Catholic Bishops Conference and the Religious Freedom Project of Georgetown University's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs brought together leading Catholic scholars to address these questions from different perspectives. Cardinal Donald Wuerl gave the symposium keynote address.
Participant Bios:
GERARD BRADLEY, a noted scholar in the fields of constitutional law as well as law and religion, joined the faculty of the Notre Dame Law School as professor in 1992, having taught at the University of Illinois from 1983 to 1992. With Professor John Finnis, he has served as director of Notre Dame's Natural Law Institute and as co-editor of the institute's American Journal of Jurisprudence since 1996. He is president of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars, vice president of the American Public Philosophy Institute, member of the board of advisors of the Cardinal Newman Society, chair of the Federalist Society's Religious Liberties Practice Group, member of the Ramsey Colloquium on Theological Issues, and member of the board of advisors of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists. He is a graduate of Cornell University and Cornell Law School.
LISA CAHILL is J. Donald Monan Professor in the Department of Theology at Boston College. Her scholarly interests lie broadly in the area of Christian ethics, particularly Catholic social ethics, sex and gender ethics, New Testament and ethics, bioethics, the history of Christian ethics, and the ethics of war and peace. She is a past president of both the Catholic Theological Society of America and the Society of Christian Ethics and she is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Professor Cahill has written a number of books including Sex, Gender, and Christian Ethics, Family: A Christian Social Perspective, and Bioethics and the Common Good. Her articles have been published in Theological Studies, The Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics, and the Journal of Religious Ethics. She holds a B.A. from the University of Santa Clara and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.
JOHN O'MALLEY is a Jesuit priest and University Professor in the department of Theology at Georgetown University. His specialty is the religious culture of early modern Europe, especially Italy. He is also an expert on the Second Vatican Council. Fr. O'Malley has held a number of fellowships, from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and other academic organizations. He is the author of The First Jesuits and What Happened at Vatican II, among other publications. He has edited or co-edited a number of volumes including The Collected Works of Erasums and The Jesuits and the Arts. Fr. O'Malley holds a doctorate from Harvard University.
TOM FARR is Director of the Religious Freedom Project at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs and a Visiting Associate Professor of Religion and International Affairs at Georgetown's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. A former American diplomat and leading authority on international religious freedom, Farr has published widely, including "Diplomacy in an Age of Faith" in Foreign Affairs (March/April 2008), and World of Faith and Freedom: Why International Religious Liberty is Vital to American National Security (Oxford University Press, 2008). Farr received his BA in history from Mercer University, and his Ph.D. in modern British and European history from the University of North Carolina.
Source: Georgetown University's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs.
