Catholic Schools and Religious Liberty: A Global Perspective

The conference will bring together legal scholars, educators and Catholic Church officials, from the Vatican and around the world, to explore legal constraints on religious liberty and school autonomy facing Catholic schools in various legal contexts. This conference will have two distinct goals: The first goal is to better understand how legal and education-policy constraints shape the operations of Catholic schools globally and to engage in an open dialogue about which types of constraints represent acceptable accountability regulations and which represents undue restraints on religious liberty and school autonomy. The second, and equally important, goal is to learn about the Catholic Church’s experience with—and perspectives on—the legal constraints under which Catholic schools operate and to aid them in responding constructively to threats to religious liberty and school autonomy.