Skip to main content

Mary Mother of God Resource

Our Mary the Mother of God Packet offers educational and prayer resources to help you learn about and pray with Mary as sister, companion, prophet, disciple and mother.

Cover art: Mary, Mother of Mercy. Copyright by Janet McKenzie. Used with permission.

This resource download includes:

  • Mary, the Mother of God:  The Oldest and Most Controversial Feast day by Judith Davis, Ph.D.
  • Opening to Heaven: The Shrine Madonnas by Judith Davis, Ph.D.
  • Holy Virgin, Mother of God: When Faced with Impossible Standards by Deborah Rose-Milavec
  • Mary in the Age of Complementarity by Deborah Rose-Milavec
  • Mary the Prophet by Penelope Duckworth
  • The Wisdom of Older Women by Penelope Duckworth

DOWNLOAD

Sr. Christine Schenk

Learn more about Sr. Christine Schenk, CSJ, FutureChurch co-founder, whose efforts whose work in Church reform and renewal calls the Church to become a fuller witness of God’s mercy in the world.

Before joining the Cleveland Congregation of Saint Joseph, Christine Schenk confessed “that my whole life I seem to end up getting into these causes that can be edgy, and if that was a problem, we had better talk about it.” Born in Lima, Ohio, Schenk grew up in a devout Catholic family. And she credits much of her involvement in these “edgy” causes to an experience she had in her Catholic high school:

I went to a Catholic high school with a very progressive principal who was very social-justice oriented. Senior year, we went on a trip to teach catechism to farm workers…it ended up being a huge wake-up call about people who didn’t have nearly as much as we did. We were eating the food, but the people harvesting it didn’t have enough food for themselves. It was a foundational moment. That kind of experience at that young an age was really germane to how I thought about social justice and what it meant to be a Catholic going forward. It eventually led me to where I am now.  

After high school, Schenk went on to earn her undergraduate degree from Georgetown University and a master’s degree in science from Boston College. After college and graduate school, Schenk worked as an interfaith coordinator with the United Farm Workers Union in the early 1970s in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. During this time, Schenk learned the community organizing skills from Cesar Chavez that would become so vital to her work as co-founder and founding executive director of FutureChurch.

Resources Included in This Download:

  • Educational resources: A Biography of Sister Christine Schenk with discussion guide; In Her Own Words (Schenk’s Reflection for the 2016 Mary of Magdala Celebration in Cleveland) with discussion guide; Radical Grace  Film Discussion Guide
  • Be a Witness of Mercy: Resources for learning and doing
  • Prayer Resources: Prayer Service for Church Reform and Renewal by Russ Petrus and Jocelyn Collen.
  • Original Art by Marcy Hall, commissioned by FutureChurch

Download

Sr. Jeannine Gramick

In 1971, while engaged in study for her doctoral degree at the University of Pennsylvania, Sr. Jeannine Gramick was invited to attend a monthly dance hosted by the campus’s Episcopal church. The associate rector of the church had convinced her to come simply to sell soda and other concessions, but accepting the invitation would place Gramick’s life and ministry on a new trajectory. It was at that dance that Gramick first met Dominic Bash, a gay man.

A few weeks later, the two met again at an interfaith service and Gramick came to learn more about the pain her new acquaintance was carrying. Bash had been raised Catholic. He even entered the Franciscans with the intention of becoming ordained. Yet, he left the order early because he was concerned that being gay would prohibit him from being ordained a priest. In time, Bash became a hairdresser and joined the Episcopal Church.“[He] had been thrown out of the confessional one too many times,” Gramick says.

Learn more about and be inspired by Sister Jeannine Gramick’s advocacy for justice for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community and for reconciliation between the church and LGBT Catholics.

Resources Included in This Download:

  • Educational resources: A Biography of Sister Jeannine Gramick with guide for discussion and reflection; In Her Own Words (Sister Jeannine Gramick discusses the violence of silence) with guide for discussion and reflection; Finding our way in the troubled church we love: lessons we can learn from the witness of Sr. JeannineGramick, by Bob Shine
  • Be a Witness of Mercy: Resources for learning and doing
  • Prayer Resources: Praying Psalm 139 by New Ways Ministry
  • Original Art by Marcy Hall, commissioned by FutureChurch

Download