The Catholic Church Faces Contemporary Challenges: A Roundtable with José Casanova

November 3, 2023

The Catholic Church Faces Contemporary Challenges: A Roundtable with José Casanova

In his August 2022 speech to the United Nations, Pope Francis said that we are living through World War III, which is being fought piecemeal. The environmental crisis, threats to democracy and human rights, war, and the persecution of religion are some of the challenges facing humanity and the Catholic Church, which must exercise its prophetic role.

In this discussion, scholars of different nationalities sat down with the Georgetown University Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs Senior Fellow José Casanova to discuss topics such as the crisis of democracy, human rights, church updating, and ecumenism in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. These challenges call the Church back to the exercise of its prophetic role, that is, the ability to grasp the signs of the times and ferry humanity to a better future. The goal of the discussion was to explore the complexity of these challenges by comparing perspectives that come from different cultural and disciplinary backgrounds, embracing a culture of encounter, a method used by Pope Francis to foster the development of peaceful and long-term solutions.

This event was organized by the Georgetown University Representative Office in Rome in collaboration with LUISS Guido Carli University.

Participants

José Casanova

José Casanova is a senior fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs and emeritus professor of sociology and theology at Georgetown University. He has a Ph.D in sociology from the New School for Social Research, where he served as professor from 1987 to 2007. His book Public Religions in the Modern World (1994) has become a modern classic, translated into many languages. Among his other publications are The Jesuits and Globalization (2016); Islam, Gender and Democracy in Comparative Perspective (2017); and Asian Catholicism and Globalization (2023).

Debora Tonelli

Debora Tonelli is the Georgetown University representative in Rome and a research fellow at Georgetown’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs. Tonelli’s current research focuses on the interaction between political philosophy and theology, specifically in the context of interreligious dialogue. She is professor of political philosophy and politics and religion at Pontifical Athenaeum St Anselmo and professor of themes of religion and violence at Gregorian University. Among her publications are Fra kósmos e pólis: identità e cittadinanza da una prospettiva Mediterranea (2023).

Kristina Stoeckl

Kristina Stoeckl is a professor of sociology at Luiss University, Rome. Her research areas are sociology of religion and political sociology, with a focus on Russia and Orthodox Christianity. She has published, together with Dmitry Uzlaner, The Moralist International. Russia in the Global Culture Wars (2022). Her forthcoming book co-authored with Phillip Ayoub, The Global Fight Against LGBTl Rights (2024), looks at the actors, claims, and venues of moral conservative transnational networks.

Giancarlo Bosetti

Giancarlo Bosetti is the head of Reset Dialogues on Civilizations, an association he co-founded in 2004, and Reset, a cultural magazine he co-founded in 1993. Previously, Bosetti was vice-editor-in-chief of the newspaper L'Unità. He holds a degree in philosophy and has been an adjunct professor at University La Sapienza and University Roma Tre. Among his books are La lezione di questo secolo (1992), Spin. Trucchi e tele-imbrogli della politica (2007), and La verità degli altri, La scoperta del pluralismo in dieci storie (2019).

Roberto Cipriani

Roberto Cipriani is professor emeritus of sociology at Roma Tre University. He is credited with many theoretical innovations, namely the concept of diffused religion. He has written and directed films such as Semana Santa en Sevilla (1984), Rossocontinuo (1990), and Las fiestas de San Luís Rey (1997) on festive celebrations around the world. He has been president of the Italian Association of Sociology and editor-in-chief of International Sociology. He is the author of over 70 volumes and 1,000 publications.

Don Rocco D’Ambrosio

Don Rocco D’Ambrosio is a priest of the Diocese of Bari. He is currently full professor of political philosophy at Pontifical Gregorian University. He is also professor of the ethics of public administration at Dipartimento per le politiche del personale dell’Amministrazione of the Ministry of the Interior. He has written and edited a number of books on political philosophy. He is the president of the association Cercasi un fine APS, which organizes political training schools and a school of Italian language for foreigners.

Elena Dini

Elena Dini is senior program manager of the John Paul II Center for Interreligious Dialogue. She holds degrees in Near and Middle Eastern studies, communications, Catholic theology, and interfaith dialogue, and she is working on her Ph.D. at the Pontifical Gregorian University in interreligious dialogue. Dini has worked for the past 15 years supporting different faith-based organizations in their communications activities. She serves as the official liaison with Muslim communities in the region around Rome at the Italian bishops’ conference.

Michael Driessen

Michael Driessen is associate professor of political science and international affairs and director of the M.A. program in international affairs at John Cabot University. Driessen was previously a post-doctoral fellow at Georgetown University in Qatar. Driessen’s books include The Global Politics of Interreligious Dialogue (2023), Human Fraternity and Inclusive Citizenship: Interreligious Engagement in the Mediterranean (2021), and Religion and Democratization (2014). He has published scholarly articles in Comparative Politics, Constellations, and Democratization.

Giovanni Moro

Giovanni Moro is associate professor of political sociology in the Department of Political Sciences at Sapienza University in Rome. His main field of research is the crisis and transformations of democratic citizenship. His most recent books are Cittadinanza (2020) and La cittadinanza in Italia, una mappa (2022, co-authored).

Wolfgang Palaver

Wolfgang Palaver is professor emeritus of Catholic social thought at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. His books in English are Transforming the Sacred into Saintliness (2020) and René Girard's Mimetic Theory (2013). In fall 2018, he was a member of the research workshop on religion and violence at the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton, New Jersey. From January until June 2021, he conducted a research project on Gandhi’s concept of nonviolence at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study.

Laura Pettinaroli

Laura Pettinaroli is assistant director for early modern and modern studies at the École française de Rome. Pettinaroli is also the principal investigator of the Globalvat project Rebuilding the World, Society, and Human Identity (1939-1958): The Global Perspective of the Vatican Archives. As a historian, her research focuses on Vatican diplomacy, Catholic-Orthodox relations, communism, anticommunism, and atheism in the twentieth century. She has published La politique russe du Saint-Siège (1905-1939) (2015).

Peter C. Phan

Peter C. Phan currently holds the Ignacio Ellacuría, S.J. Chair of Catholic Social Thought at Georgetown University. He has earned three doctorates and received four honorary doctorates. He is the first non-Anglo to be elected president of the Catholic Theological Society of America. In 2020, he was given the John Courtney Murray Award, the highest honor of the Catholic Theological Society of America, in recognition for outstanding and distinguished achievement in theology. His work, which includes over 30 books and 300 essays, has been translated into 12 languages.

João J. Vila-Chã

João J. Vila-Chã is a professor of social and political philosophy at Pontifical Gregorian University. Since 2011, Vila-Chã has been vice president of the Council for Research in Values and Philosophy and director of the Post-Graduate International Seminar, which is offered yearly to chosen scholars from around the world. He previously served as president of the European Association of Jesuit Professors of Philosophy and the Conférence Mondiale des Institutions Catholiques Universitaires de Philosophie. He was a recipient of the International Karl-Otto Apel Prize for Philosophy in 2017.