Social Research and Action Center
Center for Social Research and Action (CERAS: Centre de recherche et d'action sociales) – formerly Popular Action – is an association created in 1903 by the Society of Jesus. Its social action aims at the construction of a more just and inclusive socio-economic system. Its chief impact comes through research and the publication of the magazine Project, the maintenance of a website, and the organization of conferences and training.
History
The Center for Research and Social Action (CERAS) is the heir of Action Populaire, founded in 1903 by Jesuit Father Henri-Joseph Leroy, at that time in exile in Belgium. Its founder proposed to implement the encyclical Rerum novarum (May 15, 1891) which inaugurated the social doctrine of the Catholic Church, and also to support the encyclical Au milieu des solicitudes (February 20, 1892) which invited the Catholics of France to back the French Republic (1870-1940).
CERAS adopted its present name in 1961. Its action has kept social justice as a major goal, whose meaning has evolved in the twentieth century. The center, while focused on labor law in the beginning, later focused on business, then agriculture, and after the Second World War on developing countries, energy, immigration, and the problem of the suburbs.
In 1984 CERAS produced a reference work on The Social Discourse of the Catholic Church from Leo XIII to John Paul II. In 2005 it celebrated 100 years in the service of social Catholicism. The same year it opened its premises in La Plaine Saint-Denis, as part of a process of deepening the research-action dimension to better reflect "the realities on the ground".
In June 2008, Bertrand Hériard Dubreuil became Director of CERAS after the departure of Pierre Martinot-Lagarde at the beginning of April to be Special Advisor to the Director General of the ILO in Geneva. Dubreuil used the Paris suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis as a basis for some of the research carried on by CERAS. In 2017 he became national chaplain for the Christian Movement of Executives and Officers and Marcel Rémon became the new director of CERAS.
Activities
The CERAS team includes both religious and lay people who endeavor to apply Catholic social teaching to their work in the social sciences. In 2017 it had fourteen staff members, one trainee, and four volunteers.
Its activity is divided into publication, research, and training. The publication component consists of the bimonthly Project, published since 1908, and of its regularly updated website. The research component after 2005 focused some on issues underlying the suburban crisis, using a suburb of Paris as a laboratory. The training component includes sessions and seminars dealing with major societal problems, joining the research work of CERAS with the work of outside stakeholders. It further sponsors the reflection of people and groups committed to social service. The center offers each year a training session for Church staff with themes such as migration or youth.
CERAS purposes a social system that does "not involve the liquidation of the welfare state, but the invention of new means to make it more efficient and to finance it." In 2016, a commentary on the Catholic right website Catholic-Ripost mentioned that, together with the newspaper La Croix, CERAS was investing $100,000 in defeating far-right candidates in France, And in the two rounds of the 2017 presidential election between Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron, CERAS joined a forum with sixty other associations to get out the vote, implicitly against Marine Le Pen.
From January 30 to February 2, 2017, the annual CERAS conference focused on the topic of one world, living together. The November 22, 2017, roundtable on "From Populorum Progressio to Laudato si ': a bold word on the developing world" was moderated by the editor of Project and included among its prominent panelists :fr:Guy Aurenche and :fr:Yves Berthelot.