American Catholics and Civic Engagement

Margaret O'Brien Steinfels served as Commonweal's editor from 1988 to 2002 and as co-director of American Catholics in the Public Square project. Peter Steinfels writes the 'Beliefs' column for the New York Times and is the author of A People Adrift: The Crisis of Roman Catholicism in America (2003).

Sheed & Ward proudly presents the first of two volumes in a groundbreaking series called American Catholics in the Public Square. The result of a three-year study sponsored by Pew aimed at understanding the contributions to U.S. civic life of the Catholic, Jewish, mainline and evangelical Protestant, African-American, Latino, and Muslim communities in the United States, the two volumes in this series gather selected essays from the Commonweal Colloquia and the joint meetings organized by the Commonweal Foundation and The Faith and Reason Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington.

Chapter 1 Introduction Part 2 Part 1: Catholic Thought in the American Context Chapter 3 The Common Good & Catholic Social Thought Chapter 4 Pluralism & the Common Good: A Response Chapter 5 Catholic Social Thought & the American Experience Chapter 6 Contending with Liberalism Chapter 7 Catholics and the Liberal Tradition Part 8 Part 2: Catholic Institutions in the American Public Square Chapter 9 The Catholic Parish in the Public Square Chapter 10 What do State Catholic Conferences Do? Chapter 11 The Limits of Coalitions and Compromises: The California State Catholic Conference Chapter 12 Catholic Health Care & the Challenge of Civic Society Part 13 Part 3: Catholics in the Public Square: Autobiographies Chapter 14 Pro-life, Pro-family, Pro-poor Chapter 15 State House Politician Chapter 16 On the Beat in the South Bronx and Central America Chapter 17 Politics and Polling Chapter 18 A Journalist's Calling Chapter 19 Look for the Real Story Chapter 20 Family, Faith and Union Chapter 21 The Workers' Worker Chapter 22 Family, Good Fortune and Stewardship Chapter 23 God Deals with Me Through My Clients Part 24 Part 4: Catholics in the Voting Booth Chapter 25 How Catholic is the Catholic Vote? Chapter 26 There Is No Catholic Vote-And It's Important Chapter 27 Catholic Republicans Chapter 28 Communitarian Lite