Global Catholicism

A photo from Northeast India to represent Catholics & Cultures at Holy Cross

The McFarland Center is committed to furthering the study of the diversity and context-specificity of Catholic practice today, in a Church whose greatest vitality is increasingly found in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

The Center promotes Global Catholicism scholarship both on campus, through faculty research and events, and in the public eye, through open-access resources like the Journal of Global Catholicism and Catholics and Cultures.

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A photo from The Congo.

Catholics & Cultures

Catholics & Cultures is a field-leading initiative of the McFarland Center that draws scholarly attention to the ways that ordinary Catholics practice their faith in their everyday lives in a huge array of cultural contexts. The initiative sponsors the Catholics & Cultures website, scholarly conversations, international conferences and an electronic journal, the Journal of Global Catholicism.  

A screenshot of the Catholics & Cultures website.
A screenshot of the Catholics & Cultures website.

The Catholics & Cultures website has published more than 250 articles on 33 countries across five continents. These, plus accompanying demographic data and videos, provide insight into particular cultures and local variations on Catholic practice.  The site's articles and videos have been accessed more than 10 million times by users in 206 countries since the site's launch in 2015.

The Catholic World

nuns on donkeys

The Catholic World, an upcoming volume set to be published in the Routledge Worlds Series, aims to be a comprehensive resource for scholars and students who wish to engage with Catholicism not as a monolith, but as an ever-evolving and locally instantiated lived religious tradition. It features writing with perspectives spanning not only North America, but across the globe.

 

Read the abstract and find the chapter outline for the upcoming volume here.

Journal of Global Catholicism

The cover of the 2025 issue of the Journal of Global Catholicism

 

Since its launch in 2016, the Journal of Global Catholicism, an open-access, peer-reviewed scholarly journal, has emerged as the leading journal in this rapidly emerging field. 

Journal of Global Catholicism cover

 

In addition to scholarly articles, most JGC issues also include discussions with scholars and other prominent individuals in the field of Global Catholicism. You can view all of the interviews on our YouTube channel. 

Global Catholicism Cover

Current Issue

The latest issue of the Journal of Global Catholicism explores Catholic interspiritual dialogue with Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, and Judaism. Guest edited by Bryan Lobo, S.J., of the Pontifical Gregorian University, this open-access special issue examines how Global Catholicism is grounded in encounters with religious traditions that engage shared human questions while maintaining their distinctive theological and cultural identities. Freely available to readers worldwide, the journal extends the McFarland Center's commitment to accessible scholarship and global intellectual exchange.

Read The Journal

The Journal's Reach

The Journal is featured in major academic indexes like SCOPUS. Other notable feats as of April 2026 include:

  • 117 Published articles
  • 180 Countries represented in the Journal's readership
  • 82,742 Articles downloaded

Faculty Committee

Five faculty at Holy Cross have a primary focus on Global Catholicism and advise the initiative.

  • Tom

    Thomas M. Landy

    Director of the McFarland Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture
  • Mathew Schmalz

    Mathew Schmalz

    Professor
    Areas of Expertise Global Catholicisms, Hinduism, Catholic esotericism, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Jehovah's Witnesses, religion and violence, religion and the erotic
  • Audrey Seah

    Audrey Seah

    Assistant Professor - On Leave Fall 2025/Spring 2026
    Areas of Expertise Liturgical studies, global Catholicism, Deaf and disability theology
  • Eduardo Gonzalez

    Eduardo Gonzalez

    Assistant Professor - On Leave Fall 2025/Spring 2026
    Areas of Expertise global liberation theologies, Catholicisms of the Global South, contemporary systematic theology, decolonial thought
  • Headshot of Brent Otto, S.J.

    Brent Otto, S.J.

    Assistant Professor of South Asian History and Global Catholicism
    Areas of Expertise Colonial and post-colonial South Asia, Social histories of race and caste difference, Indian Christianity, Missionaries and education

Global Catholicism Grants

In order to continue to enhance the College's strengths in teaching and research on global Catholicism, the McFarland Center offers supplemental research funding in a competitive process open to all faculty at the College. 

 

Grants are awarded in collaboration with the Committee on Faculty Scholarship, which issues calls annually.

 

Our first round of awards are:

 

Theologizing the Just Peace Movement: Catholicism, War, and Peacebuilding 

 

Spring and Summer 2025


Grant Recipients: Matthew Eggemeier and Peter Fritz, Religious Studies

 

This new co-authored book project, provisionally titled Theologizing the Just Peace Movement: Catholicism, War, and Peacebuilding, will offer a Catholic systematic theology of just peace, developed out of Catholic practices of nonviolence and resistance to American militarism abroad and racialized state violence domestically. The "Just Peace" framework we will explore accounts for a variety of social practices geared toward resolving social conflicts without recourse to violence except in extreme cases of last resort. This book will use systematic theology to help understand and practice Just Peace by discovering coherent yet implicit theologies of peace in the work of global Catholic organizations dedicated to fostering justice as a way toward building lasting peace. 

Diffused Religiosity among Catholics in the Sinosphere: Investigating Polymer Clay Miniatures of Food in Singapore’s Columbariums

 

Spring 2026


Grant Recipient: Audrey Seah, Religious Studies

 

In a Singapore state-run columbarium where people of different religions are put to rest, it is common to find dollhouse-sized polymer clay miniatures of local foods attached to the niche plaque or the base of a columbarium niche of Catholics with Chinese ancestry. Using Chinese ancestral rites as a starting points and drawing upon the concept of diffused religion, this project aims to investigate the prevalence of these polymer clay miniatures and associated spiritualities of death and the afterlife by observing practices at Catholic cemeteries and columbariums over the Lunar New Year season. In line with the goals of the McFarland Center Global Catholicism grant, potential findings may challenge the binary of liturgy and popular religiosity and diffused religion and institutional Catholicism, and facilitate the identification of expressions of indigenized Catholicism in the Sinosphere.