Lay academics dominate research on Asian Catholics

Jun 14, 2024

SINGAPORE: In a changing trend across the Church in Asia, the number of lay academics with expertise on the region's Catholics is increasing, taking such studies out of the clerical dominance, shows a new survey.

The increased involvement of non-clerics in studying Asian Catholics illustrates “how this field of research is gradually migrating into the public domain,” according to the survey result released on June 14 by the Singapore-based Initiative for Study of Asian Catholics.

The survey “aimed to evaluate the involvement of academics with knowledge of Asian Catholicism in the Synod on Synodality,” lay theologian Michel Chambon, the principal investigator of the survey.

It was the “first attempt to map out the state of the field of research on Asian Catholicism from an interdisciplinary perspective,” Chambon said.

The survey was conducted in May as the second session of the 16th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, popularly called Synod on synodality, is scheduled for October in the Vatican.

The survey report,Synodality and Academics of Asian Catholicism, said it invited 292 academics working on Asian Catholics to participate, and 119 responded, registering one-third participation.

An overwhelming 75 percent (90 respondents) were lay people, with priests and nuns forming only 25 percent (29 respondents).

“In 21st-century Asia, knowledge and research on Asian Catholics are produced by a diversity of actors, with most of them positioned outside of the clerical sphere,” the survey report said.

Some lay people were not practicing Catholics, it added.

Most respondents (79 percent) had doctoral qualifications, which indicates that most academics of Asian Catholicism “have achieved high educational attainment and have the professional expertise,” the report said.

Men dominated (65 percent) among the academics, with five percent refusing to reveal their gender.

Most academics were aged between 64 and 45, but 27 percent were below 45, suggesting that scholarship “has been built over multiple decades and continues to attract the interest of the next generation of scholars.”

These academics came from varied disciplines, such as social sciences (34), theology (28), history (18), and religious studies (17). The report said the presence of only one canon lawyer suggested that the “contemporary making of Canon Law barely intersects with ongoing research on Asian Catholicism.”

Most of these academics were based in Asia and Western countries, with just one respondent from Africa and Latin America. The study indicates that, despite having a strong Catholic presence in these regions, they “remain underrepresented in scholarship on Asian Catholicism.”

“There is very little, if any, research on Asian Catholics in Latin America and Africa,” the report said.--ucanews.com