The project was spurred by a 2018 report by the Society of Jesus that publicly disclosed the names of its members who were credibly accused of sexually abusing minors, as well as a report that year by a Pennsylvania grand jury that found similar findings in diocesan priests. It was funded by a $1 million gift from a private donation.

On Thursday, Jan. 26, the group released its final report, featuring research projects conducted by 18 teams from 10 Jesuit universities. In addition to Fordham, the initiative included lay and clergy faculty from Creighton, Gonzaga, Georgetown, Loyola Chicago, Loyola Maryland, Marquette, Rockhurst, Santa Clara, and Xavier universities.

The research projects addressed topics connected to the Society of Jesus, but were not limited strictly to it. There was often overlap with other parts of the Roman Catholic Church, such as specific parishes. They covered six themes: Jesuits and Jesuit Education; Education; Institutional Reform; Moral Injury and Spiritual Struggle; Race and Colonialism; and Survivors and Survivor Stories.

In addition to team projects, the initiative featured a three-day conference hosted at Fordham in April 2022 as well as eight webinars, four of which were devoted to historically marginalized U.S. communities.

Bradford Hinze, Ph.D., the Karl Rahner Professor of Theology and director of the initiative, said after two and half years, he is more impressed than ever with how much time and energy scholars have devoted to try to address past wrongs and prevent future ones. Their dedication has been “a bit overwhelming,” given how painful the subject is, but is also a source for optimism.

“My big take away is that we need to find ways of building greater relationships of collaboration and more transparency,” he said, “because here we have a lot of lay people—not all are lay people, but most are—who are committed to the Jesuit identity and mission.”

That commitment manifested itself in reports that varied from one about an individual abuser by the team at Creighton University to one examining the best way to tell survivors’ stories by Georgetown University’s Gerard J. McGlone, S.J. A report from Fordham professor C. Colt Anderson, Ph.D., that focused on reforming Jesuit schools noted that “pastoral care principles influence disciplinary processes.”

“There is an emphasis on being patient and merciful that allows for inferior performance and outright misbehavior,” he wrote.

“As a member of a religious order told us, there is confusion between what is simply sinful and what is criminal.”

Key Findings and Recommendations

The report includes six key findings and specific recommendations for learning and action.

The first of the group’s findings is that there is “a divide emerging in research and practice between those focused primarily on “safeguarding” and those focused on what the group is calling “historical memory work.” Safeguarding is focused on preventing present and future abuse, while historical memory work produces research on what happened in the past, in many cases performing a very close analysis of instances of abuse.

Hinze said the group chose to emphasize the importance of historical memory work in response to the forward-facing nature of the Society of Jesus’ most recent Universal Apostolic Preferences, which are in essence the religious order’s list of priorities. He noted that representatives from the Society of Jesus in Rome had been very cooperative, but the group still felt the need to highlight the importance of looking to the past.

“The Apostolic preferences all aim to start from right now and look forward. But if you only do that, you don’t really spend time pondering, reflecting upon, and truly meditating on what were the causes and contributing factors that led up to this, and what were the historical, institutional, and cultural repercussions,” he said.

Another finding highlights the fact that although the first sexual abuse cases in the United States were widely reported as early as 2002, very little research has been done to examine how much abuse was committed against Black, Latin American, Asian, Pacific Islander, and Native American populations.

Fordham Faculty Perspectives

Bryan N. Massingale, S.T.D., the James and Nancy Buckman Chair in Applied Christian Ethics at Fordham, contributed in this area; his study, “Clergy Sexual Abuse in African American Communities,” will be published in October. He surveyed the literature about the sexual abuse crisis to see how many church dioceses tracked the race and ethnicity of survivors and found that only one did, and it only started doing so in 2015.

This is a glaring omission, he said.

“We know for a fact that in many cases, dioceses and religious orders deliberately sent priests with problematic histories into Latino and Black communities, precisely because these communities would be the least likely to report instances of abuse,” he said.

It’s for this reason, Massingale said, that although 4% of American Catholics are Black, it’s fair to assume that more than 4% have experienced sexual abuse. Compounding the problem, he said, is the fact that Black people may not relate to the ways others are processing their abuse. In the course of his research, he spoke informally with two Black men who’d experienced abuse, and discovered that they refused to accept the popular “victim survivor” label.

“They said ‘I’m not surviving anything. I’m coping.’ And it struck me that maybe another reason why we need to pay attention to this is because even the language we use doesn’t resonate universally across human communities,” he said.

Lisa Cataldo, Ph.D., associate professor of mental health counseling and spiritual integration at Fordham’s Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education, said her future teaching will forever be informed by the work she did with the initiative. In her research project “Bearing Witness When ‘They’ Are Us: Toward a Trauma-Informed Perspective on Complicity, Moral Injury, and Moral Witnessing,” Cataldo attempted to answer a question she asked herself when the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report was published: Why am I still shocked?

“We’ve been hearing about this since 2002, if not before,” she said.

“I realized that this cycle of being OK, and then being overwhelmed with shock and horror, and then having the feeling sort of recede into the background, is the same cycle that a trauma survivor experiences.”

No solution to a trauma-based problem can work unless it addresses the trauma, she said.

“All the safeguarding that has been put in place has been very effective, and it’s absolutely vitally important. I’m not discounting any of that, but you will never heal without addressing the trauma, and that means having accountability, responsibility, dialogue, honesty, and truth telling,” she said.

“It’s like closing the barn door after the horses are out.”

Telling It Like It Feels

Cataldo suggested that a crucial part of the healing process should involve people who Israeli philosopher Avishai Margalit dubbed the “moral witnesses.”

“In order to really stand up for and call attention to the suffering imposed on one group by another group of people, the moral witness has to be someone who speaks the truth,” she said.

“But the moral witness doesn’t just tell it like it is. The moral witness tells it like it feels. To be a moral witness, the person needs to have been either a survivor themselves or have something at stake. You have to have skin in the game.”

The participants in Taking Responsibility fit that bill, she said, by virtue of working for Catholic institutions and working to highlight the painful truth.

The project has inspired Cataldo to do more herself. This fall, she will oversee the unveiling of GRE’s Advanced Certificate in Trauma-Informed Care program. Importantly, she said, the certificate program explores how spirituality can be both a balm for people healing from trauma and a shield that prevents them from acknowledging their own trauma.

“It’s very important to understand how unexamined religious practices and religious structures like the Catholic Church can sometimes re-traumatize or compound the trauma of people if they don’t understand how trauma and faith intersect,” she said.

This year, the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development—an office that promotes human development, particularly for migrants and refugees—launched a new project under Pope Francis. The goal of the project, Doing Theology from the Existential Peripheries, was to interview those who are often excluded from conversations in the church and to use their feedback to improve the church and its practices. 

The dicastery recruited nearly 100 theologians, including Hinze, to speak with people across each continent. (Hinze is the sole representative from Fordham.) More than 500 people, including migrants, refugees, prisoners, and victims of abuse—people who live at “the existential peripheries,” in the words of Pope Francis—shared testimonials.

Testimonials on Some of the Most Pressing Issues

Last semester, Hinze conducted in-person interviews in New York with about 50 people, predominantly Catholics. He met members of three groups—Black Catholics in the Parish of St. Charles Borromeo in Harlem, LGBTQ Catholics in St. Francis Xavier Church in Manhattan, and Latina Catholic migrants at Our Lady of Mount Carmel in the Bronx—as well as other individuals. 

“I tried to find people who could contribute to a discussion about some of the most pressing issues, especially in the United States. Since I teach theology and in the area of the church, I know that there’s a lot of tension in the U.S. on race issues,” said Hinze. 

In videotaped interviews, he asked them to reflect on their experiences in life and with the church. What were their biggest sources of joy, pain, and sorrow? Where did they see God at work—or not? How had their faith helped or hindered them? How could the church have better helped them? 

Some questions were targeted toward specific groups. They were asked to consider their struggles as immigrants in the Bronx or in the church. Others were asked about how racism and discrimination against their sexual orientation had caused them to think differently about God and Catholicism. 

A Surprising Message of Gratitude 

Trena Yonkers-Talz, GRE ’23, who was recruited by Hinze to interview the Latina women in Spanish, said that her group spoke transparently about their painful memories in the U.S. and in their native countries, where they felt rejected by the church for different reasons, including having a family member in the LGBTQ community. In recounting their stories, many of the women wept, she said. But with the help of God, they were able to heal from their past wounds and imagine a brighter future. 

What surprised her the most, said Yonkers-Talz, was the message they would give Pope Francis if he were sitting beside them. 

“I expected them to want to tell him everything that needed to be fixed, but instead, they wanted to tell him how grateful they are—how much they’re trying to live out their faith and that their faith matters to them,” Yonkers-Talz recalled. “Their posture of gratitude really struck me because our whole conversation wasn’t one of gratitude. Yet at the end, there was still this profound sense of faith and gratitude for the church and its leadership.” 

‘That’s a Message That the Universal Church Needs to Hear’ 

Hinze, who interviewed Black and LGBTQ Catholics, said that the testimonials from both groups were moving and “brutally” honest. 

“The Black Catholics were incredibly honest about their experience of racism in the church by priests and bishops, including priests who won’t talk about violence against Black people in New York, Harlem, and elsewhere,” Hinze said. “They spoke from their heart about it—so much that I was quite moved. I choked up, just listening to them. But at the same time—and this was equally moving—they spoke about how deeply connected they are to their Catholic community and how filled and encouraged they are to be in this group. The LGBTQ group did the same thing. … I think that’s a message that the universal church needs to hear.” 

After analyzing the interview transcriptions, Hinze contributed his summary to a 120-page collective report from the North American theologians that will be made available to bishops worldwide. On Oct. 12, scholars and Vatican officials met at a conference in Rome, one of their first opportunities to discuss the project reports. They will further discuss the theologians’ findings with Pope Francis two years from now in Rome, at the conclusion of the Synod on Synodality—a three-year process of listening and dialogue initiated by the Pope.

A project of this scale has never been conducted before by the Vatican, said Hinze. He said he hopes that bishops around the world will sincerely listen to the lay people’s stories and their thoughts on how the church can address where it’s fallen short—to “see what life is really like for those who live on the margins and to learn from them.” 

“It all goes back to this: The bishops need to invite and listen to people to talk about their struggles and joys in the church,” he said. These conversations should be going on, not just through the Vatican, but in dioceses and in parishes as well. You need to sit with people in your parish and ask, ‘Who’s on the margins? Who has left the church?’ And talk to them.”

This different view can be seen in Brooklyn and the Bronx, where congregations were listening to something more than authority figures’ dictates when they set out to make their communities better during the past five decades, argues Bradford Hinze, PhD, the Karl Rahner, SJ, Professor of Theology.

His book, Prophetic Obedience: Ecclesiology for a Dialogical Church (Orbis, 2016), advances a creative understanding of obedience by examining both local church life and grassroots democratic action.

“In the way obedience has traditionally been understood, you obey the person in authority, whether in your family, in the government, or in the church,” Hinze said. “Prophetic obedience calls for responding to the aspirations and laments of the community around me in my own situation.”

“Prophetic obedience is not blind obedience to higher-ups on the one hand, and it’s not following the mob on the other hand,” he said.

The book tells a story that began a half-century ago with the Second Vatican Council and its emphasis on dialogue rather than obedience to hierarchical authority. What emerged from the council was the idea of the church as the people of God, all of whom are empowered by the Holy Spirit to share in the prophetic office of Jesus Christ, Hinze said.

Around 1980, this idea became eclipsed in many sectors of the church by a re-emphasis on  centralized authority around the pope and the Roman curia. But the idea of a dialogical church had taken hold in the Archdiocese of New York, where parish pastoral councils—not always supported by the archdiocese—branched out into local issues like housing, crime, and education, working with lay leaders and with people of other faiths and worldviews.

To illustrate, Hinze explores the founding of South Bronx People for Change at St. Athanasius Parish in the 1980s, as well as efforts by Jesuit scholastic Paul Brandt. In addition to teaching philosophy at Fordham, he organized local pastors to challenge the threat of encroaching fires from the South Bronx, which led to the formation of the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition.

In the book, Hinze relates parishes’ grassroots engagement to the concept of prophetic obedience, or the act of heeding a “prophetic sense of the faith.” Through baptism, every Christian is invited to cultivate this prophetic sense as they discern how to live out the Gospel.

“A prophet emerges by heeding, hearing, and responding to the laments and the aspirations in the community and in the world,” Hinze said. “But prophets also need to be attentive to their own laments and their own aspirations, to exercise their own consciences, to discern, to take a stand.”

“It’s common … for Christians to emphasize that Jesus obeyed his heavenly Father,” Hinze said. “But Jesus also obeyed the voice of the Spirit that he heard in all of the people around him who were suffering and lamenting about how restricted their lives were, how marginalized they felt. Responding to these voices animated Jesus’ prophetic mission.”

Further, while typically God the Father is described as the authority and Jesus as the obedient son, scripture discloses that “the Father is obedient too,” Hinze said. “The Father heeds and hears and responds. We find God in the Hebrew scriptures heeding and hearing and responding to suffering humanity, but also to the wailing created world.”

The book’s themes echo some of the central convictions expressed by Pope Francis, which was pleasantly surprising for Hinze, who wrote it during the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI.

“It was disorienting at first,” Hinze said. “You’re hearing a voice ‘out there’ that you’ve been hearing ‘in here’ for quite some time.”

“Karl Rahner’s Legacy and the Frontiers of Theology Today,” which Hinze delivered on Feb. 11 at the Rose Hill campus, was a celebration of teachings of Father Rahner, a German Jesuit and one of the most influential among Catholic theologians who forged the modern understanding of Catholicism.

Fordham’s connections to Father Rahner run deep, as three faculty members were key translators and interpreters of his work. One of them, William V. Dych, S.J., professor of theology in the 1980s and 1990s, translated into English Father Rahner’s seminal work, Foundations of Christian Faith (Seabury Press, 1978).

Even today, Father Rahner’s dedication to searching sources of Catholic theology for ways to captivate and energize people in their everyday lives can be seen in the works of fellow Fordham theologians, said Hinze. He cited as examples of “new frontiers” in theology the works of his fellow theology department faculty Richard Viladesau, Ph.D., professor, in the area of aesthetics; Elizabeth Johnson, C.S.J., Distinguished Professor of Theology, in her feminist approach to the Christian understanding of God; and Jeannine Hill Fletcher, Th.D., professor, in her feminist approach to religious pluralism.

Besides being attentive to God’s pervasive self-donation and self-communication, Father Rahner also detected a mysticism of everyday life found among Christians, Buddhists, agnostics, and even atheists, Hinze said.

“This particular posture toward life experience established in him a great pastoral sensitivity to the questions and concerns of those around him,” Hinze said. Father Rahner was credited with writing more than 4,000 articles and books. The vast majority of his writings were “prepared in response to particular pastoral questions posed to him, or [ones]that he himself wrestled with.”

Although Ignatian spirituality was key to Father Rahner’s philosophy, Hinze noted that two years of studying with philosopher Martin Heidegger helped the Jesuit learn “how to think the unthought thoughts of a position, and to puzzle with unresolved questions or problems that came to light in a text.” Father Rahner felt that, in considering the development of doctrines, theologians have focused too exclusively on the past and not enough to open questions of a current and future development of dogma.

Hinze’s current work considers practices of communal discernment and decision-making in the church and faith-based community organizing in light of the mission of the church. Analogous to Father Rahner’s attention to the human quest for knowledge, freedom, and love, Hinze explores the search for human flourishing expressed in people’s aspirations and laments. Here Hinze finds fascinating connections between the convictions of Father Rahner, Fordham University, and the struggles for the well-being of citizens in the Bronx. He gave special attention to Bronx community groups that were influenced by Chicago community organizer Saul Alinsky.

In their struggles for housing, living wages, and economic democracy, groups like the South Bronx People for Change and the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition are channeling Alinsky’s energies. Alinksy, an agnostic son of Jewish parents, developed lifelong bonds of collaboration and friendship with Catholic intellectuals, bishops, priests, and lay leaders with whom he did grassroots work for social justice.

“People from various theological traditions and disciplines, inspired by community organizing, can benefit from the wisdom of diverse schools of theology and interdisciplinary contributions from philosophy, sociology, economics, political science, and critical theory,” said Hinze. “This multifaceted encounter between ‘the schools and the streets’ is providing a rich opportunity for a lively research agenda exploring how the power of God’s grace works in communities as they struggle with destructive powers.”

The Rahner Chair was created thanks to the generosity of Stephen E. Bepler, FCRH ’64, and Kim Bepler. Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, praised the Beplers as a couple who live to find ways to support Fordham and the Society of Jesus.

“They are extraordinary friends of the University,” he said. “Steve and Kim are ideal citizens of the University, and I cannot thank them enough for their generosity of spirit.”

“Karl Rahner’s Legacy and the Frontiers of Theology Today,” which Hinze delivered on Feb. 11 at the Rose Hill campus, was a celebration of teachings of Father Rahner, a German Jesuit and one of the most influential among Catholic theologians who forged the modern understanding of Catholicism.

Fordham’s connections to Father Rahner run deep, as three faculty members were key translators and interpreters of his work. One of them, William V. Dych, S.J., professor of theology in the 1980s and 1990s, translated into English Father Rahner’s seminal work, Foundations of Christian Faith (Seabury Press, 1978).

Even today, Father Rahner’s dedication to searching sources of Catholic theology for ways to captivate and energize people in their everyday lives can be seen in the works of fellow Fordham theologians, said Hinze. He cited as examples of “new frontiers” in theology the works of his fellow theology department faculty Richard Viladesau, Ph.D., professor, in the area of aesthetics; Elizabeth Johnson, C.S.J., Distinguished Professor of Theology, in her feminist approach to the Christian understanding of God; and Jeannine Hill Fletcher, Th.D., professor, in her feminist approach to religious pluralism.

Besides being attentive to God’s pervasive self-donation and self-communication, Father Rahner also detected a mysticism of everyday life found among Christians, Buddhists, agnostics, and even atheists, Hinze said.

“This particular posture toward life experience established in him a great pastoral sensitivity to the questions and concerns of those around him,” Hinze said. Credited with writing over 4,000 articles and books, the vast majority of Father Rahner’s writings were “prepared in response to particular pastoral questions posed to him, or [ones]that he himself wrestled with.”

Although Ignatian spirituality was key to Father Rahner’s philosophy, Hinze noted that two years of studying with philosopher Martin Heidegger helped the Jesuit learn “how to think the unthought thoughts of a position, and to puzzle with unresolved questions or problems that came to light in a text.” Father Rahner felt that, in considering the development of doctrines, theologians have focused too exclusively on the past.

Hinze’s current work considers practices of communal discernment and decision-making in the church and faith-based community organizing, in light of the mission of the church. Analogous to Father Rahner’s attention to the human quest for knowledge, freedom, and love, Hinze explores the search for human flourishing expressed in people’s aspirations and laments.

Here Hinze finds fascinating connections between the convictions of Father Rahner, Fordham University, and the struggles for the well-being of citizens in the Bronx. He gave special attention to Bronx community groups that were influenced by Chicago community organizer Saul Alinsky.

In their struggles for housing, living wages, and economic democracy, groups like the South Bronx People for Change and the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition are channeling the energies of Chicago community organizer Saul Alinksy, an agnostic son of Jewish parents who developed lifelong bonds of collaboration and friendship with Catholic intellectuals, bishops, priests, and lay leaders with whom he did grassroots work for social justice.

Like Alinsky, Father Rahner was a great listener who devoted energy to hearing out people’s issues, concerns, aspirations, and laments in his quest to understand the dynamism of the human spirit.

“People from various theological traditions and disciplines, inspired by community organizing, can benefit from the wisdom of diverse schools of theology and interdisciplinary contributions from philosophy, sociology, economics, political science, and critical theory,” said Hinze. “This multifaceted encounter between ‘the schools and the streets’ is providing a rich opportunity for a lively research agenda exploring how the power of God’s grace works in communities.”

The Rahner Chair was created thanks to the generosity of Stephen E. Bepler, FCRH ’64 and Kim Bepler. Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, praised the Beplers as a couple who live to find ways to support Fordham and the Society of Jesus.

“They are extraordinary friends of the University,” he said. “Steve and Kim are ideal citizens of the University, and I cannot thank them enough for their generosity of spirit.”

Like Rahner, Father McShane said Hinze would advance the cause of the church.

“Brad is an accomplished scholar and a great mentor to our students. He is a man who is deeply committed to the church, and he is a man who, because of all of this, is marked by not only generosity of spirit, but honesty of heart,” he said.

“First of all, the CTS is hospitable and promotes collegiality,” said Hinze. “It has been fostering great intergenerational collegiality among theology and religious studies faculty members who teach in colleges and university. They have a friendly, perhaps laid back style. They meet annually in the spring at Catholic Universities and colleges, stay in the dorms, eat meals together in the cafeteria, and socialize in the evenings. Everyone comments on the hospitality of this group and the friendships they have formed there.

“Second, this group sponsors the journal Horizon, which publishes essays and book reviews in theology and religious studies. In addition, they publish a volume of essays annually based on the theme of the yearly conventions. These two publications provide important venues for established scholars to published materials, but also it is very important that they provide new scholars, both newly minted Ph.Ds, and also those who are finishing up their degree programs, with respected places to get their work in print. These two publications give scholars traditional blind reviews of their submissions. The CTS may be friendly, but it promotes the highest level of scholarship, without being snooty.

“Third, besides promoting the highest level of scholarly achievement through publications, the CTS also emphasizes the importance of solid and innovative pedagogies in the classroom. The CTS sees both scholarship and pedagogy as vitally important, but also as mutually related. They yearly devote sessions to pedagogy.”

Hinze’s statement to the Society on the occasion of his nomination is available on the website.