For those in the New York area, David Gibson — whose respected work as author and journalist many America readers will know — will be giving a lecture at Fordham this Tuesday the 28th. Titled “The End of Catholic Politics?”, Gibson’s talk will take place at 5pm at Flom Auditorium in the Walsh Library at the Rose Hill (Bronx) campus. 

The description of the lecture emphasizes the deep questions confronting the Catholic Church in the United States today: “The Catholic Church in the United States is at a crossroads regarding its historic role in the public square. This is due to a number of critical developments in past years that in recent months and weeks have come together to force a reckoning that could reshape — and perhaps sharply downsize — the Catholic Church’s public profile. Where will the Catholic Church go from here? David Gibson, a longtime Catholic writer and currently national reporter for Religion News Service, argues that there is likely no single way forward, but rather a variety of roads that will be taken by different sectors in the Church. Will these lead to a diminished Catholic voice, or an enhanced Catholic witness?” 

The event is co-sponsored by the Department of Theology, the Curran Center for American Catholic Studies, and the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education. If you are interested and close to New York City, we hope you can come. 

 Tom Beaudoin is associate professor of theology at Fordham University, in the Graduate School of Religion. His latest book is Witness to Dispossession: The Vocation of a Postmodern Theologian.