Catholicism Represented: Democracy, Religion and Global History, 1789-2025
The Inaugural Alfred and Melissa Di Leonardo Lecture Series听
John McGreevy
University of Notre Dame
Date:听Thursday, February 27, 2025
Time:听5 - 6:30pm
Location:听245 Beacon 107听听
The lecture examines the long and tangled modern history of Catholicism and democracy, with one eye toward its implications for the study of global history and another toward our understanding of the present moment.听
John T. McGreevy is the Charles and Jill Fischer Provost and Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame. He has served as provost since 2022. Also at Notre Dame, he served as the I.A. O鈥橲haughnessy Dean of the College of Arts and Letters from 2008 to 2018.
He is the author of four books. Parish Boundaries: The Catholic Encounter with Race inthe Twentieth Century Urban North (University of Chicago Press, 1996), Catholicism and American Freedom: A History (W.W. Norton, 2003), American Jesuits and the World (Princeton University press, 2016) and Catholicism: A Global History from the French Revolution to Pope Francis (W.W. Norton, 2022). A French language edition of Catholicism appears from Descl茅e de Brouwer this spring. He has received major fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Louisville Institute and the Erasmus Institute, and has published articles and reviews in the Journal of American History, The New York Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, Chronicle of Higher Education, Commonweal, The New Republic, and other venues.
Carney, J. J. 鈥淕lobal Catholicism: Diverse, Troubled, Holding Steady.鈥� International Bulletin of Mission Research 46, no. 1 (2022): 25-34. https://doi.org/10.1177/23969393211051444.
Carozza, Paolo G., and Daniel Philpott. 鈥淭he Catholic Church, Human Rights, and Democracy: Convergence and Conflict with the Modern State.鈥� Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 15, no. 3 (2012): 15-43. https://doi.org/10.1353/log.2012.0023.
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Formicola, Jo R., 鈥淕lobalization: A Twenty-First Century Challenge to Catholicism and Its Church.鈥� Journal of Church and State 54, no. 1 (2012): 106-121. https://doi.org/10.1093/jcs/csr144.
Froehle, Bryan T., and Massimo Faggioli. Global Catholicism: Between Disruption and Encounter. Leiden: Brill, 2024.
Lehner, Ulrich L. The Catholic Enlightenment: The Forgotten History of a Global Movement. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
McGreevy, John T. Catholicism: A Global History from the French Revolution to Pope Francis. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2022.
Raposa, Michael L. 鈥淧ragmatism, Democracy and the Future of Catholic Theology.鈥� American Journal of Theology & Philosophy 30, no. 3 (2009): 288鈥�302. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27944484.
Rowe, Erin K. Black Saints in Early Modern Global Catholicism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.
Philpott, Daniel. 鈥淐hristianity and Democracy: The Catholic Wave.鈥� Journal of Democracy 15, no. 2 (2004): 32-46. https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2004.0034.
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that details an interview with the youngest Cardinal in the Catholic church: Cardinal Mykola Bychok, who serves as the Bishop of the Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of Australia, New Zealand, and Oceania. Cardinal Bychok described feeling called to religious life at the age of fifteen and looked to the Redemptorists, his future Order, as role models for how to live a life of holiness. Similarly to his predecessors, the Bishop had to leave his ministry in Crimea because of the Russian invasion. He recognizes the importance and responsibility of meeting the spiritual needs of Ukrainian migrants in Australia and in addressing conflict in Ukraine and other parts of the globe. Although he first thought his appointment was a joke when he picked up the phone in Brisbane, the newly-made Cardinal now serves as a representation of the Church鈥檚 shifting vision emphasizing a youthful leadership and global picture. This current moment of democratic fragility and conflict in the world has given to a leader like Cardinal Bychok who is directly impacted by these issues. Provost John McGreevy will discuss his own understanding of the historical relationship between Catholicism and global democracy in his lecture.
Photo credits: Christopher Soldt, MTS