Catholic Think Tank Combines Faith, Justice : Religion: The Center of Concern is dedicated to solving world problems with inspiration and expertise.

There’s nothing about the big white clapboard house in the family-oriented neighborhood of northeast Washington to suggest that its occupants are out to change the world.

For the past 17 years, that has been precisely the goal of the Center of Concern, a kind of Roman Catholic think tank dedicated to solving worldwide problems of injustice by throwing expertise and religious commitment at them.

“We’re bleeding-heart liberals, but we do our homework,” said Father James Hug, director of the center.

“From the earliest beginnings of the center, we have tried to bring a faith perspective to the cause of justice,” said Father Peter Henriot, who was director until leaving earlier this year for a yearlong sabbatical in Africa. “It is not simply a matter of linking faith and justice, but of seeing that the one is incomplete without the other.”

In the 17 years since the Center of Concern was founded with the joint backing of the Society of Jesus and the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, it has played a significant role in the church’s social justice ministry.

Through books, pamphlets, study guides, videotapes, seminars, workshops, symposiums and consultations, the center has provided expertise and inspiration to a wide range of people and on a variety of topics.

With a senior staff of six, the center last year produced 10 books and four videotapes and led or participated in nearly a score of conferences and seminars on topics ranging from the international debt crisis to an exploration of women’s liberation.

“Our agenda emerges out of the sense of need and the interest of people on the staff,” said Hug.

One example of the center’s work was the role staff members played in the Catholic bishops’ pastoral on economics, from start to finish. Four center staff members participated at the preliminary hearings held to help shape the pastoral, Hug said.

Then the center was asked to critique the first draft of the pastoral. “We were told our critique had the single greatest influence” on the final draft, Hug said.

Once the final document was released, Hug did a condensed version of the pastoral for wide distribution in the churches, and Henriot produced a videotape on it.

“By not being a part of the (bishops’) conference, but by being the friendly critic, we were able to have a strong influence,” he said.

A key part of the center’s aim currently, he said, is the development of networks--the putting together of people and groups with common concerns. “There is a real need for global collaboration,” he said, “a growing sense that we have to be able to collaborate with people in different parts of the world. . . .

“We try to see ourselves as brokers, putting together people from other parts of the world with key people in this country.”

Not all of the center’s activities are rigorously cerebral. Every year, in what has become a welcome tradition, the staff throws a big “y’all come” potluck picnic for the scores of people--Protestant as well as Catholic--in the nation’s capital who work on behalf of social justice.

It is a welcome opportunity for people with common goals and similar perspectives to renew old friendships and make new ones.

The guest list for the picnic is not screened as carefully as, say, a White House dinner, and one year the invitation was inadvertently read on a local radio station. “I thought there were an awful lot of people I didn’t know,” Henriot said, recalling the confusion.

But the burgers and baked beans kept coming, and everyone got fed.

While founded by the Jesuits and the bishops’ conference, the center remains independent of both--”a central player in the mix without being part of it,” the director said.

Its budget, currently just over $600,000, comes from individual contributions, fees for lectures and other staff services, and from educational outreach programs.

Henriot sees some irony in the fact that the house that now accommodates the Center of Concern, with all of its liberal, post-Vatican II ideas, was previously occupied by a group of Mexican nuns who had been brought here to serve as cooks at a nearby seminary, now defunct.

Over every window in the house the nuns had nailed up colorful portrayals of the bleeding sacred heart of Jesus, a devotional symbol in high favor with some conservative Catholics.

The nuns “put them up as protection against break-ins,” Henriot explained. It was an expression of spirituality not appreciated by the urbane and sophisticated Jesuits, who promptly took them down.

“Within a week, we were broken into,” he said.