The Challenge of Pluralism: Articulating a Rationale for Religiously Diverse Urban Roman Catholic Schools in the United States

2000 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph M. O’Keefe

This essay explores the challenge of pluralism through an examination of religiously diverse urban Roman Catholic schools in the United States. Changes in student demographics have forced members of the sponsoring religious body to ask: Why should schools with a large number of non-Catholics be sponsored, often at great cost, by a church community with limited resources and expanding needs in other domains? Based on the belief that religious institutions must be seen in their particular historical, sociological and political context, the essay begins with a discussion of these issues. In that light, the author presents three rationales for continued support that emanate from the heart of contemporary Catholic thought: ecumenism, racial justice and solidarity. Finally, he offers reflections for a multi faith, international audience about the legitimation of religiously affiliated educational institutions.

Author(s):  
Lori Freedman ◽  
Debra Stulberg

Religious hospitals represent a large and growing share of the United States healthcare system. As these networks expand their reach, patients may face additional threats to their ability to receive care based on their own values. Physicians practicing in religious institutions—especially in Catholic hospitals—have experienced moral distress when prevented from providing medical care in accordance with the patient’s best interest, and many are surprised by the scope of restrictions under Catholic directives. Patients need accurate information about the care they can expect to receive in religious institutions. However, many lack awareness and knowledge of how to identify religious institutions and services available. This chapter addresses the history, clinical conflicts, bioethical concerns, and empiric literature about reproductive care in US religious healthcare institutions, focusing on Catholic health systems.


Author(s):  
Andrew Valls

The persistence of racial inequality in the United States raises deep and complex questions of racial justice. Some observers argue that public policy must be “color-blind,” while others argue that policies that take race into account should be defended on grounds of diversity or integration. This chapter begins to sketch an alternative to both of these, one that supports strong efforts to address racial inequality but that focuses on the conditions necessary for the liberty and equality of all. It argues that while race is a social construction, it remains deeply embedded in American society. A conception of racial justice is needed, one that is grounded on the premises provided by liberal political theory.


Author(s):  
Katherine Dugan

This book is an ethnography of millennial-generation Catholic missionaries. The Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS) began hiring young adults to evangelize students on college campuses in 1998. Since then, FOCUS missionaries have developed a style of Catholic evangelization that navigates between strict and savvy interpretations of Catholic teaching in contemporary US youth culture. The Catholicism that FOCUS missionaries embrace and promote grew up with them and amid their middle-class American norms—missionaries own iPhones, drink craft beer, and create March Madness brackets. Born in the 1990s, millennial missionaries in their skinny jeans and devotional tattoos, large-framed glasses and scapulars embody an attractive style of Catholicism. They love saints and have memorized the “Tantum Ergo,” are fluent in college-student slang, but reject hook-up culture in favor of gender essentialism dictated by papal teachings. Missionaries rely on their social capital to make Catholicism cool. Many of their peers have been characterized as defectors from religious institutions. Yet, underneath the rise of “nones” is a story of increased religious piety. This book studies religion in the United States from the perspective of proud Catholic millennials. As they navigate their Catholic and US identities, these missionaries propose Catholicism as uniquely able to overcome perceived threats of secularism, relativism, and modernity. How, why, and with what implications is this Catholicism enacted? These questions, which point to power struggles between US culture and religious identity, drive this book. Through their prayers and evangelization efforts, missionaries are reshaping Catholic identity and shifting the religious landscape of the United States.


Contexts ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 54-56
Author(s):  
Katharine Gary

In this article, the author compares the May 4th protests on Kent State's campus to the current protests for racial justice across the United States.


2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
James B. Stewart

This article argues that contemporary antislavery activism in the United States is programmatically undermined and ethically compromised unless it is firmly grounded in a deep understanding of the African American past. Far too frequently those who claim to be “the new abolitionists” evince no interest in what the original abolitionist movement might have to teach them and seem entirely detached from a U.S. history in which the mass, systematic enslavement of African Americans and its consequences are dominating themes. As a result contemporary antislavery activism too often marginalizes the struggle for racial justice in the United States and even indulges in racist ideology. In an effort to overcome these problems, this article seeks to demonstrate in specific detail how knowledge of the African American past can empower opposition to slavery as we encounter it today.


2014 ◽  
Vol 19 (02) ◽  
pp. 1450010
Author(s):  
BRIAN ARTHUR ZINSER

The purpose of this paper is to explore how a small remote Midwestern bank reformulated itself into a major marketer of retail Islamic financial services in the United States and influenced Islamic financial services marketing in North America. The paper is based on a review of existing literature and a case study of how University Bank, now based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, has become the leading provider of Islamic financial services in the United States. University Bank whose principals are Roman Catholic identified the Muslim market in Southeast Michigan as measurable, differentiable, accessible and substantial. As part of the Bank's reformulation strategy it has successfully executed a strategic plan to capture this growing market in the United States and North America. The paper draws attention to the often ignored attractiveness of the Muslim market in North America as well as highlights how a small, nimble organization has been able to capitalize on using Muslims as a market segmentation variable.


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