The Murnion Lecture was presented by John Carr, founder and director of the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown University. His lecture, entitled “Faithful Citizenship in 2016: Is There Common Ground to Pursue the Common Good?,” was challenging and insightful in light of the 2016 cycle of elections.
The Initiative, which Carr launched in 2013, is a unique effort to share the wisdom of Catholic Social Thought more deeply and broadly and to help educate and encourage a new generation of Catholic lay leaders in carrying out their vocation to be “salt, light and leaven” in public life.
Carr also is Washington correspondent of America Magazine and its “Washington Front” columnist.
Carr is a long-time leader at the intersection of faith and public life in Washington. For more than two decades, he served as director of the U.S. Catholic Bishops’ Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development. Before his time at the USCCB, Carr served as Cardinal Hickey’s Secretary of Social Concerns in the Archdiocese of Washington, as Education Director of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, and as Legislative Coordinator for the Archdiocese of St. Paul/Minneapolis.
Outside the Catholic Church, Carr served as executive director of the White House Conference on Families under President Jimmy Carter and as director of the National Committee for Full Employment, a civil rights-labor–religious coalition led by Coretta Scott King.
Carr retired from the USCCB in 2012 to accept a Residential Fellowship on “religion and politics” at the Institute of Politics of Harvard University.
He and his wife Linda have four children and five grandchildren.
Click here to view the video of the 2016 Bernardin Award Presentation and Murnion Lecture.
