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FutureChurch’s Women Witnesses for Racial Justice series continues with a celebration on the Solemnity of the Assumption, honoring the power and creativity of women – particularly women of color. Presider: Vickey McBride Witness: Naudia Loftis Readers: Crystal Catalan and Rose Lue Music reprinted and streamed under ONE LICENSE #A-737115.
Hebrew Bible Scholar, Rev. Wil Gafney., Ph.D., argues that the overwhelming majority of Christians receive their scripture mediated through a lectionary. Lectionaries are not simply as androcentric as are the scriptures, but women are even less well represented than they are in the biblical text. To the degree that biblical texts function as scripture for religious readers, it ought to be possible to tell the story of God and God’s people through the most marginalized characters in the text. Though the bible is an androcentric document steeped in patriarchy, a women’s lectionary should demonstrate and grapple with the gender constructs of the text rather than romanticize heroines.
FutureChurch celebrates the 2021 Feast of St. Mary of Magdala. Our virtual liturgy, “Mary of Magdala and Many Others: A Global Celebration of Catholic Women,” was led by Lucy Rieger with preaching from Kayla August. Read by FutureChurch participants from all over the world, our “Litany of Naming” helped us learn about seven Catholic women engaged in amazing ministries and provided participants an opportunity to lift their own names.
Medievalist, Dr. Christine Axen, Ph.D. offers a presentation entitled “Un-Erasing Mary of Magdala: Scenes of the Crucifixion.”
Dr. Christine Axen is a medievalist with a specialization in French religious history and female religiosity in the Middle Ages. She received her doctorate from Boston University, and currently teaches at Fordham University in New York.
FutureChurch welcomes Mr. Andrew Lyke who offers a presentation on how white Catholics can shed white fragility and join in the cause for racial justice.
Sr. Maureen Sullivan, OP leads this four-part education series about the contributions of theologians who laid the groundwork for the Council, the documents, and how to make Vatican II a greater reality today. Videos to each of the presentations and PDFs of Sr. Maureen’s presentations can be found below.
Dr. Maureen Sullivan is a Dominican Sister of Hope from New York and Professor Emerita of Theology at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire. She received her master of arts in Theology from Manhattan College in the Bronx and her PhD in Theology from Fordham University, also in the Bronx. The Second Vatican Council, along with its impact on our Church, is at the center of her theological research. She has written two books on Vatican II: 101 Questions and Answers on Vatican II (2002) and The Road to Vatican II: Key Changes in Theology (2007), both published by Paulist Press.
Session One – General Introduction
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Session Two – The Council Looks at the Modern World
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Session Three – The Council Looks at the Laity
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Session Four – The Council Looks at the Church Itself
Professor Natalia Imperatori-Lee explores how dominant narratives about Catholicism in the United States often render the stories of its significant and growing Latinx membership, especially that of Latina women invisible or irrelevant. Few U.S. Catholics understand that Latinx/Hispanic Catholics encompass both the oldest Catholic inhabitants of this land and its newest arrivals. Through the literary and artist works of Latina women like Rosario Ferré and Yolanda López, as well as the popular faith practices such as the devotion to Guadalupe, Imperatori-Lee illustrates how the sensus fidelium subverts institutional notions of holiness and offers a more truthful, complicated, but wholistic understanding of the intuitions and holiness of the laity, in general, and women in particular.
Natalia Imperatori-Lee is Professor of Religious Studies at Manhattan College in the Bronx, NY, where she also coordinates the Catholic Studies program. She is the author of Cuéntame: Narrative in the Ecclesial Present (Orbis Books, 2018). Her work has appeared in Theological Studies and The Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion. A Cuban-American native of Miami, Florida, Imperatori-Lee has served on the Board of Directors of the Catholic Theological Society of America and the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians of the US. She lives in the Bronx with her spouse and two sons.
FutureChurch celebrates the life and witness of Anna Madre Bates with this prayer service for Mother’s Day. We celebrate the motherhood of Anna Bates, founder of Our Lady of Victory Parish in Detroit, MI and lament our Church’s failure to “mother” all her children, particularly Black Catholics. Our prayer is led by Vickey McBride with witnesses from Shirley Slaughter Harris and Dr. Kimberly Lymore.
Music printed and streamed with permission under ONE LICENSE #A-737115.