McLean Center for the Study of Culture and Values (MCSCV)  The Catholic University of America

The McLean Center for the Study of Culture and Values (MCSCV) is one of the CUA research centers  established in 2000. Its original name was The Center for the Study of Culture and Values with a financial support from the McLean Family via Rev. George F. McLean OMI (1929-2016), the founding director. The Center was renamed after McLean in 2017. It hosts various projects of the International Council for Research in Values and Philosophy (RVP) which is its outreach agent.

Mission: Mining the work of the Spirit in each people. Culture is best understood as the cumulative dialogue through history between the initiative of the Spirit and the responses of humankind in its varied environments. The goal of the MCSCV is to promote a creative mining of the resulting cultural traditions and their application to the issues of contemporary life. This is a new mode of philosophizing bringing the deep values to life from, in and through the deep cultural commitments of the many peoples in order that they be lived intensively and pervasively across civilizations. 

History: Progressive engagement from Eastern Europe to China, Islam and Africa. The MCSCV developed out of professional organizations in order to enable thinkers and activists to accomplish together what they were not able to undertake. It pioneered the first international conferences in third world countries (India, Kenya, Colombia) and found ways (with John Paul II when Cardinal of Krakow) to get through the Iron Curtain to Eastern Europe in the 1970s-1980s, next to China in the 1980s-1990s, and to Islam as priority concerns in 1990s. This work has been cumulative and progressively and has come to constitute a truly world-wide engagement. 

Mode of Operation: Discovery and application of the work of the Spirit by research teams, regional conferences and extended seminars. (a) forming task forces in the various university centers for creative research on the problems of their people; (b) following this by general area conferences; and (c) holding annual extended 5-10 week international seminars on specific urgent issues. This work is done at the thought center of the different cultures so that their educational and administrative structures can carry the results through the different levels of their national structures to guide the life of the entire populace of the many countries singly and globally. 

Global Network: Publication in print and on the web makes this a prime global network for the communication through cultures. The results of the above work are published and distributed to 350 university libraries world-wide. The complete texts are also permanently and universally accessible on the website. This complex of research teams and publications across the developing nations constitute a unique cooperative effort today at mining, enriching and interchanging the cultural and religious resources of the world and its many civilizations. This constitutes a most active network, evoking and cooperating in the work of the Spirit in, with, and by, the multiple