I was honored to serve as a delegate for a global convening at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum) in Rome, Italy. Conversations that unfolded across three days in March 2024 centered interdisciplinary strategies for deep listening attentive to methodology, marginalization, best practices, representation, and ecclesiology. The convening was organized in partnership with the Synod on Synodality Listening Project, bringing together scholars from multiple continents. Grateful for the opportunity to expand my imagination and networks in support of longer-term goals aligned with global and local synodal processes.

Thanks to St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Canada, for hosting me for the Spring 2024 Lecture in the Catholic Experience. I especially appreciated the thoughtful questions, personal stories, and rich conversations after delivering my talk, “Her [and His] Place in the Church: Gender, Power, and Authority in Contemporary Catholicism.” The Catholic Register ran this article about the event.

Also during the visit, I had the opportunity to deliver an interactive workshop on behalf of Springtide Research Institute. Thanks to the inspiring gathering of educators, administrators, and religious leaders who participated by learning and sharing empirical and lived dimensions of identify, experience, and interactions with “Gen Z.”

Thanks to Heidi Schlumpf and the National Catholic Reporter for inviting this conversation about the work I’ve done through sociology to understand different perspectives across the Catholic landscape. It’s shared, imperfect, and unfinished.

“Catholics not as polarized as often portrayed, new synod consultant says”

Scientific American recently covered research that colleagues and I conducted on everyday Americans’ abortion attitudes, with special attention to new article in Science Advances I co-authored with Kendra Hutchens and Sarah Cowan. This piece explores perceptions Americans hold of who gets abortions and why (what we call the “abortion imaginary”). As both articles explain, perceptions don’t always match reality, carrying consequences for how we imagine and opine about abortion in the U.S.

Science Advances has published a piece I authored in collaboration with Kendra Hutchens and Sarah Cowan on how Americans imagine who gets abortions and why. We call these perceptions part of an “abortion imaginary,” showing how those perceptions cut across abortion opinion and interact with personal knowledge of abortion experience (whether self other). Read the full piece here: The “abortion imaginary”: Shared perceptions and personal representations among everyday Americans. The article is also available via NIH here.

I’m re-reading my 2021 contribution to “Reclaiming the Piazza III: Communicating Catholic Culture” (edited by Ronnie Convery, Leonardo Franchi, and Jack Valero) from a new vantage point, anticipating my Synod consultor appointment. I’ve observed with intrigue, gratitude, curiosity, and occasional surprise the ways that social science (and I) appear in public conversations about the Church. This piece differs in content and style from most of my writing and research, but feels relevant to the moment to share. Purchase the full book here.

The Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies (IACS) at the University of Southern California has for years supported robust scholarship, cross-cutting dialogue, and creative collaboration “to ensure that the rich and evolving tradition of Catholic thinking will thrive among future generations through the research and teaching of scholars and intellectuals.” Their support fueled “The American Parish Project” I co-led years ago (leading to, among other things, my co-edited volume “American Parishes”). Since then, I’ve enjoyed participating in online IACS webinars and acting as a mentor to the Generations in Dialogue program. I’m now honored to be among its newly-established list of Affiliated Scholars engaged in ongoing, interdisciplinary dialogue with roots in the Catholic intellectual tradition. IACS is on an exciting new trajectory under the leadership of President/Sociologist, Dr. Richard Wood — I’m thrilled to support and celebrate the journey.