Donald Paul Sullins
Editorial Board of Advisors
The Rev. Donald Paul Sullins, Ph.D., taught sociology at Catholic University for 20 years before retiring in 2015 to devote himself to full-time research. He has written four books and over 150 journal articles, book chapters, and research reports on issues of faith and culture, including in Social Forces, American Journal of Sociology, Demography, Sociology of Religion, Southern Medical Journal, and JAMA Psychiatry.
Dr. Sullins’ work focuses on the application of quantitative methods to pose fresh theoretical questions or insights on questions of cultural import from a faith-informed perspective. His study topics include Catholic priests, particularly clergy sex abuse, married priests, and priest demography; the conjugal family; and emotional problems among post-abortive women and children with same-sex parents.
Since 2015, he has given dozens of keynote addresses, lectures, and presentations at scholarly and popular conferences in Europe and the United States. Dr. Sullins is Senior Research Associate of the Ruth Institute, Director of the Leo Initiative for Catholic Social Research, and Fellow of the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies. He serves on the Board of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists, where he is also chaplain. Formerly Episcopalian, Fr. Sullins is a married Catholic priest with an inter-racial family of three children, two adopted.