Webinar Series on Confronting Clergy Sexual Abuse: “Taking Responsibility”

Fordham’s ongoing “Taking Responsibility: Jesuit Educational Institutions Confront the Causes and Legacy of Clergy Sexual Abuse” project is sponsoring two spring webinars.

Part I: Memorializing Clergy Sexual Abuse

Join us for an interdisciplinary conversation about the ethics, means, and meanings of public memorials related to clergy sexual abuse.

In this webinar, three scholars will explore questions about whether, when, and how communities can contend with the history and memory of the Roman Catholic clergy sex abuse crisis. With expertise in trauma studies, liturgy, theology, and history, our panelists ask about the ethics, means, and meanings of various efforts to remember clergy sex abuse, as well as those who suffered and defied it.

Part II: Whose Stories Are They? Catholic Sex Abuse Records and the Issue of Transparency

Springing from a recent legal settlement that promised an abuse documents archive in the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, this webinar asks questions about the meanings, limits, and promise of “transparency” in the effort to understand and ameliorate the Catholic clergy abuse crisis.

What is to be learned, gained, and achieved in opening up the archives of Catholic sex abuse? What kind of healing follows from transparency, if any? Beyond respecting the wishes of survivors who prefer privacy, are there any other limitations to consider? What does transparency have to do with Catholic theology or with the practices and disciplines of Catholic experience?

Join us as four experts—an archivist, a canon lawyer, a survivors’ attorney, and a historian—tackle these and related questions.

Email takingresponsibility@fordham.edu with any questions.