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Event Recap

Mara Willard, assistant professor of religious studies at the University of Oklahoma, delivered a luncheon colloquium at the Boisi Center on the topic of 鈥淐atholic Afterlives.鈥� Dr. Willard is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Boisi Center, where she has been advancing her research on the so-called 鈥淐risis in the Church鈥� of 2002. The latter is a book project that considers how initiatives for ecclesial reform in response to the clergy sex abuse scandal were conditioned by the practices and cultural shifts of post-war Catholicism. Her March 23 lecture, which served as a forum for scholars to deliberate the paradigmatic prospects and challenges of her scholarly enterprise, addressed one principal query: What cultural identities, social affiliations, and aesthetic preferences persist among Catholics who leave the Church? 聽

Willard began by foregrounding the theological origins of her study as well as defining terminologies related to her project. One such origin is the outdated framework in the study of religion. Sociologists and anthropologists have customarily evaluated the growing body of Catholics that no longer claim a connection to the Roman Catholic Church through a lens of 鈥渋nstitutional loss.鈥� This understanding, Willard stressed, neglects post-affiliative roles (e.g., 鈥渁lumni鈥� and 鈥渧eteran鈥�) and effaces 鈥淐atholic afterlives.鈥� Another origin is the post-Vatican II biblical encyclicals on birth control. However, Dr. Willard dates her personal interest to the outbreak of the Boston clerical sex abuse crisis of 2012. 聽

Dr. Willard then outlined her research methodologies for her book project on 鈥淐atholic afterlives.鈥� She intends to explore not just the reasons for disaffiliation, but also what she calls 鈥済ifts and sorrows of Catholic afterlives.鈥� These include pilgrimage, the arts, community service, and academic scholarship鈥撯�揳ll practices and identities of those who had been formed as Catholics. Exploring Catholic 鈥渁fter-lifers,鈥� however, is made difficult because 鈥渆xternal typologies can conflict with 鈥渟elf-ascription鈥� of 鈥渁fter-lifer鈥� status. More broadly, Willard discerns a 鈥渘ew anti-Catholicism鈥� (see: Ron Duthat and George Weigel), as well as an 鈥渋ntra-Catholic agonism鈥� (see: Bruce Springsteen).

During the question-and-answer session, participants raised some issues for Dr. Willard to consider in her book project. Some referred to the 鈥渟tickiness鈥� of the Catholic faith. Others highlighted that departure from the Catholic faith does not necessarily indicate hostility, but could also reflect a lack of spiritual nourishment. Others urged Dr. Willard to consider the behavior of 鈥渁fter-lifers鈥� as transformed versus persistently Catholic activities, while yet others stressed the salience of gender, class and sexuality as confounding variables for after-lifer aesthetics.