Center of Concern

Center of Concern
Abbreviation Center
Established 1971 (1971)
Purpose Social justice
Location
Region served
Global
President
 Lester A. Myers
Chair of Board
 John P. Langan, S.J.
Development
 Christine M. Hyland
Main organ
 Education for Justice
Affiliations Catholic Charities USA, CIDSE, United Nations Economic and Social Council
Website coc.org

Center of Concern (Center) is a think tank in Washington, D.C., that Jesuit Superior General Pedro Arrupe, S.J., and National Conference of Catholic Bishops General Secretary Joseph Bernardin (later Cardinal Bernardin) co-founded on May 4, 1971. The Center started as a joint project of the Society of Jesus and the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (now United States Conference of Catholic Bishops), but has operated independently since then.

History

Beginnings

The context for the founding of the Center was the document “Justice in the World” produced by the Synod of Bishops in Rome in 1971. At this synod, the world’s Catholic bishops decreed: “Action on behalf of justice and participation in the transformation of the world fully appear to us as a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the Gospel, or, in other words, of the Church's mission for the redemption of the human race and its liberation from every oppressive situation.”[1]

The Center’s purpose is to study issues of development, justice, and peace from a global perspective. From the start, the Center has convened discussions regarding development, justice, and peace from a global perspective, reading the sign of the times and supporting United Nations, Catholic social tradition, and other frameworks for such issues as population, hunger, environment, poverty, habitat, science and technology, and women’s empowerment.

The Center’s founding director, the Rev. William F. Ryan, S.J.,[2] served from 1971 to 1978. His assistant, the Rev. Peter J. Henriot, S.J., succeeded him and served from 1978 to 1988.[3] From the beginning, women religious played a significant role in providing capital, governance leadership, and scholarly contributions to its work.

Eighties and nineties

Beginning in the 1980s the Center focused more on analysis of emerging social movements within the United States, on behalf of women,[4] workers, the poor, and peace issues. The Center assisted the U.S. Catholic bishops with their pastoral letters on racism, peace, and the U.S. economy. In the 1990s, turning again to U.N. conferences and development abroad, the Center focused on the work of global civil society and social service organizations and community-centered, local, and grassroots organizations to complement the work of intergovernmental organizations such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to aid the poorest people in the world .[5]

The year 1996, the 25th since the Center’s founding, marked anniversaries of the document Justice in the World from the 1971 Synod of Bishops, the 20th anniversary of Pope Paul VI's encyclical Evangelization in the World, and the 10th anniversary of the U.S. Catholic bishops' pastoral letter on the U.S. economy, Economic Justice for All.[6] In the spring of 1997, the Center convened a conference with the bishops’ team that drafted the last document and Marquette University, bringing Catholic social tradition and Scripture to bear on social justice issues in the global economy, with a focus on an array of decision makers, including consumers, investors, and corporate leaders.[7]

The Rev. James E. Hug, S.J., served as the Center’s president from 1989 to 2012.[8]

New millennium

Three years of preparation by the Center culminated in 1999 with a conference on an International Gender and Trade Network (IGTN) to protect the interests of women, children, families, and communities. The conference drew worldwide participation and led to the Center's designation as the secretariat for this effort, with a steering committee from regions worldwide.[9]

In Jubilee Year 2000 the Center organized an initiative involving its Rethinking Bretton Woods Project Justice,[10] which began in 1995, and explored the policy implications for debt relief for poor nations. Following this, the Center welcomed the news that the U.S. Congress and administration canceled the bilateral debt of over 30 Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC).

The Center founded Education for Justice[11] in 2001 as a Web-based global subscription service to provide a bridge of conversation between Catholic social tradition and the signs of the times in terms accessible to members in high schools, universities, parishes, religious congregations, and healthcare organizations, as well as for individuals. Education for Justice won the Harry A. Fagan Roundtable Award in 2011.[12]

Lester A. Myers, a professor of business ethics and law at Georgetown University, became the Center’s fourth president, and its first non-Jesuit president, in 2013.[13]

The Center's Rethinking Bretton Woods Project continues to study the impact of international loans, grants, and trade on the poorest people and nations. It advocates for integration of human rights standards into trade and investment policies[14] that financial institutions, nations, and the United Nations espouse. It participates in major meetings of organizations like the WTO, IFI, and World Social Forum, World Bank,[15] International Monetary Fund, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and United Nations.

The Center has continued to attune and deliver its research, education, and advocacy through Education for Justice; the Rethinking Bretton Woods Project; and an Integral Voices Web-based dialogue on issues implicating girls’ education, women’s empowerment,[16] and integral ecology (the holistic term Pope Francis used in Laudato Si). In Education for Justice and other projects, it has been following the model of its “Community of Creative Voices” by commissioning original written and other material from a cadre of globally prominent pastoral, thought, and executive leaders. Education for Justice continues to make available to its members a growing on-line library of approximately 4,000 resources that it has created or commissioned since 2001. It has been making broader use of social media, multimedia, and other large-scale platforms, including in promoting its Pastoral Circle [17] and I Am Miriam [18] anti-human trafficking initaitives, and in its annual Signs of the Times Social Justice CalendarTM. It also has been providing advisory services to organizations to assist them with philanthropic, educational, and strategic matters.

The Center represents the United States in the global lay Catholic development and advocacy alliance, Coopération Internationale pour le Développement et la Solidarité (CIDSE) and is a member of Catholic Charities USA. It has been accredited with consultative status before the United Nations Economic and Social Council since 1974.[19]

See also

References

Coordinates: 38°56′3.87″N 76°59′23.12″W / 38.9344083°N 76.9897556°W / 38.9344083; -76.9897556

External links

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