A nationally known speaker will be the headliner at this year’s Pallium Lecture.
Ryan T. Anderson, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, will speak on the topic, “Religious Liberty is Important but It’s Not Enough,” at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 31, at the Brookfield Conference Center (325 S. Moorland Road, Brookfield).
The Pallium Lecture (the lecture is named after a woolen vestment conferred by the Pope on an archbishop, consisting of a narrow circular band placed around the shoulders with a short laplet hanging from front and back) is intended to be an annual event to foster conversation and engage the broader culture through the Catholic intellectual tradition.
“The culture needs the voice of the Catholic religion more than ever, and if COVID taught us anything, it’s how fragile the issue of religious liberty can be sometimes,” said Lydia LoCoco, the Archdiocese of Milwaukee’s director of community engagement. “During a pandemic, we want to make sure that people know the Church is not the same thing as a Target or a liquor store. We have a right to gather and to assembly and to worship, and it’s our birthright as Americans. What it taught me was, looking around the world, how blessed we are to be in this country.”
This will be the first Pallium Lecture since 2019 (the 2020 and 2021 events were canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic).
“It’s an evening where we expose people to the deep richness of the tradition of the Catholic Church,” LoCoco said. “I think on issues like religious liberty, which is near and dear to the archbishop’s heart, to have Ryan Anderson come to Milwaukee is a huge thing.”
Anderson has previously given this talk at the Napa Institute in California.
“We can’t as Catholics be content to be relegated to the corner,” LoCoco said. “We want to evangelize and be a voice for the entire culture.”
Anderson will discuss several prominent cases involving religious liberty, including the Little Sisters of the Poor case, same-sex marriage and the Colorado baker same-sex wedding cake issue.
Located right off Interstate 94, LoCoco said the new location will be ideal for boosting attendance at the event.
“Not only is the Pallium back, but we’d like to make it bigger and better,” said LoCoco. “We’re excited to have a new venue. It’s right off the freeway, centrally located and the parking is easy.”
A Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude graduate of Princeton University, Anderson earned his Ph.D. in political philosophy from the University of Notre Dame. Anderson’s research has been cited by two U.S. Supreme Court justices in two Supreme Court cases.
His work has been published by the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, the Harvard Health Policy Review, the Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy, First Things, the Claremont Review of Books and National Review.
Anderson has appeared on ABC, CNN, CNBC, MSNBC and the Fox News Channel. In addition to a memorable 2013 debate about marriage on CNN’s Piers Morgan Live, his news interviews include appearances on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, CNN’s New Day with Chris Cuomo, MSNBC’s The Ed Show with Ed Schultz and Fox News’ Hannity.
Anderson is the John Paul II Teaching Fellow in Social Thought at the University of Dallas, a member of the James Madison Society at Princeton University and a Fellow of the Institute for Human Ecology at the Catholic University of America.
For nine years, he was the William E. Simon senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, and has served as an adjunct professor of philosophy and political science at Christendom College, and a Visiting Fellow at the Veritas Center at Franciscan University. He has also served as an assistant editor of First Things.
The event is free and open to the public, but registration is required at archmil.regfox.com/pallium-lecture-2022.
