About the Project

The Democracy, Culture and Catholicism International Research Project (DCCIRP) is a collaborative undertaking by The Joan and Bill Hank Center for the Catholic Intellectual Heritage (CCIH) and the Office of the Associate Provost and Assistant to the President for Global Affairs and Initiatives. It gathers scholars from four continents to study the complex relationship between democracy and Roman Catholicism in the modern world.

Since the 18th century, Roman Catholics have been either deliberate or accidental participants in every democratic experiment with self-government, competitive elections, equal opportunity, civil rights, and freedom of expression in the world. Scholarly analysis of this phenomenon is rare, especially within different cultures and across distinct contexts, such as art, literature, religion, politics, law, economics, and communication.

The DCCIRP will assemble more than 30 scholars from around the world to work together for three years on an analysis of the relationship between democracy and Roman Catholicism from the vantage point of each scholar's cultural focus and specific field of expertise. In this way, the DCCIRP offers a truly unique multicultural and interdisciplinary opportunity for collaborative research on the complex relationship between democracy and Roman Catholicism in the modern world.