The Church Study Committee appointed by Father Malloy in the wake of the sexual abuse scandal will sponsor a conference on campus October 14, 2002.
Margaret O’Brien Steinfels, editor of Commonweal, a journal of opinion edited and managed by lay Catholics, and R. Scott Appleby, director of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, will speak along with Notre Dame faculty in theology, psychology and law. Steinfels and Appleby were the two lay people who addressed the U.S. bishops at their meeting in Dallas earlier this year.
Later in the year the committee of 11 faculty and administrators plans to facilitate a private consultation with a group of bishops. That meeting is intended to continue the dialogue initiated by the reflections and recommendations letter sent by the committee to all the American bishops prior to the Dallas meeting. A number of bishops replied to the committee with thanks and further reflections on the content of that document.