As 2024 comes to an end, we can announce that CARA celebrated its 60th
birthday. Looking back this year went well beyond the last 365 days…
In the 1950s and 1960s there were calls from within the Catholic
Church for a national social science research center so the Church could better
understand and navigate a rapidly changing society. That center was created on
August 5, 1964. The Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate’s honorary
first president Richard Cardinal Cushing provided a $50,000 start-up grant (the
equivalent of more than $500,000 today). Founding board members included
Archbishop John Cody and Archbishop Fulton Sheen.
For more about this period of CARA's history see Francis X. Gannon's article in Review of Religious Research at JSTOR (subscription required) called Bridging the Research Gap: CARA, response to Vatican II.
Upon announcing CARA’s creation, Archbishop Cody said, “Up
to the present, there has been in this country no mechanism capable of aiding
an integrated apostolic effort supported by careful study, evaluation and
scientific research. CARA will represent a serious attempt to fill this need in
a thoroughly professional and scientific manner.”
Since this time, CARA has had three major dimensions to its
mission:
- to increase the Church’s self-understanding
-
to serve the applied research needs of Church
decision-makers and to,
-
to advance scholarly research on religion, particularly
Catholicism.
CARA has never been a “think tank” and has instead focused
on being a high-quality research source who provides data for decision makers
without commentary or editorial. In our 60 years we have produced more than
2,400 research studies for Catholic organizations large and small.
Initially, CARA was located near the Catholic University of
America. Over time we have moved west across Washington DC to its current home
near Georgetown University.
During its earliest years in the 1960s and into the 1970s,
the center focused on broad questions facing the Church and employed a team of
more than 30 researchers from 20 different religious institutes. For a time in
the 1970s, in addition to research, CARA operated a conference center with
facilities for sleeping and dining in a building owned by the center near the
Catholic University of America. During this period CARA’s research was focused
on questions about leadership, diocesan and parish management and
administration, Catholic education and healthcare, as well as vocations and
formation for priesthood and religious life.
In the 1980s, CARA’s reach took on an international focus
for a time. The center also saw CARA organizations and offices start-up in Los
Angeles, Canada, and Rome. During this period, CARA was also tasked with
managing the first wave of the World Values Survey in the Americas (including
polls in Argentina, Canada, Mexico, and the United States). Today, this is one
of the longest running global studies of cultural values.
From the mid-1980s and into the 1990s, CARA had sold its
business property and began to downsize its staff and seek a new operating
model by affiliating with Georgetown University. This provided improved
financial stability. During this period, CARA was primarily doing contract
projects for dioceses and religious congregations, and strengthened its commitment
to two operating principles: developing a reputation for high-quality on-time
research services and ensuring all costs of staff and facilities were covered
by revenues from research projects.
For more about this period of CARA's history, when it celebrated its 20th year, see Dolores Liptak's article in U.S. Catholic Historian at JSTOR (subscription required) called The Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA): 1964-1984.
In the 1990s, CARA also regularly issued the CARA Seminary
Directory and the CARA Formation Directory of Men and Women Religious, among
other publications. With the assistance of a grant from the Lilly Endowment,
1987 began the biennial publication of the CARA Catholic Ministry Formation Directory, with sections on all U.S. priesthood, diaconate, and lay ecclesial
ministry programs. This study now reports statistics annually with directories
published every other year. Given the growing shortage of priests, CARA also at
this time developed its Priest Projection Program, which since that time has
completed clergy forecasts for numerous dioceses. In 1989, CARA moved to
offices near many other Georgetown University entities.
In the late 1990s and into the 2000s, CARA introduced
several new research initiatives that have stood the test of time to the
benefit of CARA’s institutional reputation and financial stability. Among these
was its individually-tailored parish in-pew survey program, which was initially
funded by a grant from Our Sunday Visitor Institute and has now been used by
more than one thousand parishes nationwide.
In 2000, CARA began producing the map of U.S. CatholicDioceses published annually in The Official Catholic Directory. That same year,
CARA introduced its CARA Catholic Poll, a national public opinion poll of
Catholic adults.
Another major event was the introduction of The CARA Report,
a quarterly research newsletter now beginning its 30th year, whose subscribers
include offices of the USCCB, many Catholic dioceses, parishes, educational
institutions, organizations, institutes of men and religious, and individual
subscribers. Its wide distribution, with summaries of recent CARA research,
continues to result in frequent mentions of CARA’s survey results and other
projects in both religious and secular news media.
During this period, CARA continued to provide specially
designed research services for its national clientele, principally dioceses,
religious institutes, and major Catholic organizations such as Catholic
Charities USA and the National Catholic Educational Association.
The continuing high quality of its research projects
solidified relationships within the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops,
resulting in annual reports on each year’s priestly ordination class, both new
entrants and permanent professions in institutes of women and men religious,
the state of the permanent diaconate, and incidents of clergy sexual abuse of
minors. The overall result of these annual data collection efforts is that CARA
has, in effect, become the official definitive source for a variety of
vocation-related and other Church statistics.
Related to the above, in this internet era, CARA embraced
the concept of having both on-site and off-site research staff who work
cooperatively together as needed to complete research projects. CARA now has
four on-site researchers, including two vowed religious, all with doctoral
degrees. Off-site staff include laity, priests, and vowed religious, all with
advanced academic degrees.
This wealth of scholarly talent has had two particularly
beneficial results: One is the active participation of CARA scholars in the
annual joint conferences of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion
and the Religious Research Association, at which they present scholarly papers and
presentations on their latest research projects. The other is a succession of
CARA-produced books and articles published by the secular and religious press.
Now in the 2020s, CARA has continued to conduct client-based
research for many Catholic dioceses and religious institutes and a wide variety
of national Catholic organizations, as well as the previously described series
of annual reports and specialized studies for the USCCB. Another recent
development has been the strengthening of research relationships with other
academic institutions such as The Catholic University of America and the
McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame.
In recent years, CARA has begun to return to something for
which it was formed six decades ago—service to an international missionary
Church. As has been the practice throughout its history, CARA adjusted to new
realities by focusing on the present-day needs of the Church—in this country
and across the world.
In 2016, in cooperation with the African Sisters Education
Collaborative (ASEC), and the support of the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, CARA
introduced the CARA Visiting Scholars Program, by which women religious from
Africa, South Asia, and Latin America come to CARA for a six-month period to
develop their skills in applied research. Over this period, each sister works
on CARA projects and develops her own research agenda. On return to her home country,
each sister completes several applied research projects that serve the needs of
religious in her nation.
In collaboration with the Catholic nonprofit Save Our
Aging Religious (SOAR!), and the cooperation of the leadership conferences of
both women and men religious, CARA also recently undertook a series of studies
and presentations investigating solutions to the problem of inadequate funding
and care for the large number of elderly religious sisters in the United
States. With support from the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, CARA then conveyed
important lessons learned about planning for the care of elderly and infirm
sisters to religious communities in other countries, first in Africa and more
recently in Asia and Latin America.
CARA now looks forward to the future with our original
mission still in mind, informed by decades of research, data, and experience to
draw on.
We paused to celebrate these 60 years in November 2024. The
event was at the Apostolic Nunciature of the Holy See in Washington, DC. Here
we honored Diocese of Tucson Bishop Emeritus Gerald Kicanas, who served as CARA’s
board chair from 2006 to 2015, with the Cardinal Cushing Medal for Advancement
in Church Research. Three organizations were presented with the Rev. Louis J.
Luzbetak, SVD Award for Exemplary Church Research: CERRA-Africa, Desarrollo y
Salud Integral de las Religiosas en México, and the Centre for Research on
Religious Life India.
Some photos from that event are below.
CARA Executive Directors: Current, Fr. Thomas Gaunt, SJ, and past, Sr. Mary Bendyna, OP and Fr. Stephen Fichter.
Sister Jane Wakahiu, LSOSF, Ph.D. Associate Vice President, Program Operations and Head of Catholic Sisters at the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation.
Diocese of Tucson Bishop Emeritus Gerald Kicanas, CARA's Board Chair 2006-2015.
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