Two New Books by Historian Francis Oakley Examine the Catholic Church

Media contact: Noelle Lemoine, communications assistant; tele: (413) 597-4277; email: [email protected]

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., Feb. 17, 2004 – Two recent books by Francis Oakley, the Edward Dorr Griffin Professor of the History of Ideas, Emeritus, and President, Emeritus, of Williams College, focus on the Catholic Church, past and present.

Oakley is co-editor with Bruce Russett, the Dean Acheson Professor of International Relations and Political Science at Yale, of “Governance, Accountability, and the Future of the Catholic Church” (Continuum). The book is a collection of addresses from a conference called to explore the implications for the future of the emerging revelations of sexual abuse by priests and the inadequacy of the church’s response to those revelations.

Held in March 2003 at Yale University, the conference brought together an international group of bishops, priests and women religious, and laity. It focused on theological and canonical perspectives; legal, political, and finance aspects of the Church at large; and challenges and opportunities in the American Church. The aim of the conference was to heal and strengthen the church by focusing attention on problems pertaining to governance and accountability.

There was general agreement at the conference about the gravity of the crisis confronting the church and about the degree to which the lack of constitutional checks and balances and the absence of effective structures of downward accountability have served to exacerbate it. There was less agreement about solutions to these problems, apart from the general sense that the various remedies being proposed could hardly be effected without the assembly of a general council in which not only bishops but also representatives of the lower clergy and laity, women as well as men, would be present and permitted to have their say.

Oakley is also the author of “The Conciliarist Tradition: Constitutionalism in the Catholic Church 1300-1870” (Oxford), a revised and extended version of the Berlin Lectures, which he gave at Oxford in 1999 when he held the Sir Isaiah Berlin Visiting Professorship in the History of Ideas.

The book begins with the crisis of the Great Schism in the 14th- and early 15th- centuries, which was settled only when a general council claimed and exercised an authority superior to that of the pope. It ends with the triumph of the high papalist monarchical vision at Vatican I (1870) and its identification with Roman Catholic orthodoxy itself. It is Oakley’s purpose, however, to draw out from the shadows “the largely forgotten or repressed tradition of constitutionalist thinking which, for half a millennium and until the late 19th-century, had competed vigorously for the allegiance of Catholics worldwide with the high papalist monarchical vision of things, so familiar to us today.”

Oakley is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and of the Medieval Academy of America as well as an honorary fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He is also president emeritus of the American Council of Learned Societies. He has written extensively on medieval and early modern intellectual and religious history as well as on American higher education, and is the author, most recently, of “The Leadership Challenge of a College Presidency: Meaning, Occasion, and Voice” (2002).

Russett serves as director of United Nations Studies at Yale. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and past president of the International Studies Association and of the Peace Studies Society (International). Author, most recently, of “Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organization” (2001), he has written extensively on matters pertaining to conflict resolution and the United Nations. He was principal advisor to the U.S. Catholic bishops for their 1983 pastoral letter, “The Challenge of Peace.” He grew up in North Adams, Mass., and graduated from Williams in 1956.

END

Williams College is consistently ranked one of the nation’s top liberal arts colleges. The college’s 2,000 students are taught by a faculty noted for the quality of their undergraduate teaching. The achievement of academic goals includes active participation of students with faculty in research. Admission decisions are made regardless of a student’s financial ability, and the college provides grants and other assistance to meet the demonstrated needs of all who are admitted. Founded in 1793, it is the second oldest institution of higher learning in Massachusetts. The college is located in Williamstown, Mass. To visit the college on the Internet: www.williams.edu

END

Published February 17, 2004