The CARA Vision
- to increase the Church's self understanding
- to serve the applied research needs of Church decision-makers
- to advance scholarly research on religion, particularly Catholicism
CARA has more than 40 years of experience in quality social science research on the Catholic Church. We offer a range of research and
consulting services for dioceses, parishes, religious communities and institutes, and other Catholic organizations. CARA’s longstanding policy is to let research findings stand on their own and never take an advocacy position or go into areas outside its social science competence. All CARA researchers have advanced degrees in relevant academic disciplines as well as pastoral experience. CARA researchers are active in the academic community publishing and presenting research about the Catholic Church.
The CARA Story
Although CARA is usually considered to have been a product of the Church’s increasing openness to science and research resulting from the Second Vatican Council (1962 to 1965), CARA’s origins go back even farther. As early as 1951 the superiors of U.S. missionary institutes called for a national research center to help reshape the missioner’s role in the emerging Third World churches. But the immediate impetus for such an organization was an article in 1961 by Richard Cardinal Cushing, on “The Modern Challenge of the Missions,” in the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Boston.
