Sex and the Catholic Church: What Does Law Have to Do with It?

Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, Member (2010–11) in the School of Social Science, is curating a new series of essays for The Immanent Frame, a publication of the Social Science Research Council. The series is centered around the theme "Sex and the Catholic Church: What Does Law Have to Do with It?"

In her introduction to the series, Sullivan writes,

"There is important new historical, theological, and sociological scholarship on the Catholic Church—on race, on women, on mission and conversion, on presence. Law, however, remains mostly stuck in older discourses of separation, privilege, and protection.… If we expand our understanding of law, as these authors do, to include the always interrelated law of the church, of gender, and the everyday law of human caring, can we see law—and religion and sex—differently? Might we even reimagine and change the law of the state, not with the unrealistic expectation of ending the abuse of power, but perhaps of recognizing, exposing, and blocking that abuse more readily?”

Read Sullivan's piece in addition to essays in the series at the The Immanent Frame.