Prominent Catholic scholars and leaders and from around the country will convene next week to discuss current threats to religious liberty and the Catholic Church’s response.
Among the speakers at the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars event in Washington, D.C., on September 28-30 will be Patrick Reilly, president of The Cardinal Newman Society, and Monsignor Stuart Swetland, director of The Cardinal Newman Society’s Center for the Advancement of Catholic Higher Education and vice president for mission at Mount St. Mary’s University in Emmitsburg, Md.
Reilly and Msgr. Swetland will address the impact of federal and state threats to religious liberty on college campuses, including Catholic colleges and universities and also Catholic ministries at non-Catholic institutions.
“The threats to Catholic educators’ religious liberty are clearly entwined with the crisis of Catholic identity,” Reilly said. “Our increasingly secular society has shown little sympathy for the First Amendment claims of institutions that half-heartedly embrace the Catholic faith. We must vigorously defend the rights of all Catholic institutions, but success depends partly on the renewal of Catholic identity in our colleges and campus ministries—not least because we need to prepare a new generation of Catholics to defend the Faith.”
The prestigious roster of speakers also includes His Eminence Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke, ecclesiastical advisor to the Center for the Advancement of Catholic Higher Education and prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura in Rome; His Eminence Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C.; Robert George of Princeton University; Thomas Farr of the Berkley Center at Georgetown University; Kyle Duncan of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty; Gerard Bradley of the University of Notre Dame; and Bill Saunders of Americans United for Life.
The event is open to the public, with special rates for students and local clergy and religious. See more information at the Fellowship website here.
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