About Our Name(s)

We’ve christened this blog Bondings 2.0. This is a “tip of the hat” to New Ways Ministry’s long-standing tabloid print publication, Bondings, which we have published continuously since 1978, one year after New Ways Ministry was established.  (You can look at recent past issues of Bondings here. You can subscribe to Bondings, or order other New Ways Ministry publications, here. )

New Ways Ministry’s newsletter was named Bondings because our co-founders, Sister Jeannine Gramick and Father Robert Nugent, wanted to emphasize that the mission of the organization was to bond together the lesbian/gay community and the Catholic Church.  The newsletter gleans articles from other news sources which chronicle the good points and not so good points of that bonding.  Over the years, Bondings has served as an archive for many researchers who have examined the history of this developing relationship.

Times have changed.   In the new electronic age, where news travels so much more immediately, there is a need for new ways of communicating, so this blog, we hope, will help to answer the need for providing our friends and supporters with information much faster.

Times have stayed the same.  There is still a need, as there was when New Ways Ministry began, for people to learn about what is going on around the church, around the nation, and around the world in regard to the LGBT community’s relationship with Catholicism.  We hope that this blog will help to continue the tradition that our tabloid newspaper began.

So, we are calling this blog “Bondings 2.0″ to emphasize that while the format is new, the purpose remains the same.

By the way, in case you ever wondered where New Ways Ministry got its name, allow me to explain that history.  In 1976, Bishop Francis Mugavero of Brooklyn, NY, wrote a pastoral letter entitled Sexuality: God’s Gift the first pastoral letter by a bishop which compassionately addressed lesbian/gay people.  At the conclusion of the letter, he stated “. . . we pledge our willingness. . . to try to find new ways to communicate the truth of Christ because we believe it will make you free.”  Sister Jeannine Gramick and Father Robert Nugent took that phrase “new ways” and applied it to the ministry of justice and reconciliation that they established one year later in 1977, calling it “New Ways Ministry. ”

–Francis DeBernarado, New Ways Ministry

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  1. […] events from the past 38 years.  We will comb through editions of Bondings 2.0’s predecessor: Bondings,  New Ways Ministry’s newsletter in paper format.   We began publishing Bondings in 1978. […]

  2. […] events from the past 38 years.  We will comb through editions of Bondings 2.0’s predecessor: Bondings,  New Ways Ministry’s newsletter in paper format.   We began publishing Bondings in 1978. […]

  3. […] events from the past 38 years.  We will comb through editions of Bondings 2.0’s predecessor: Bondings,  New Ways Ministry’s newsletter in paper format.   We began publishing Bondings in 1978. […]

  4. […] events from the past 39 years.  We will comb through editions of Bondings 2.0’s predecessor: Bondings,  New Ways Ministry’s newsletter in paper format.   We began publishing Bondings in 1978. […]

  5. […] events from the past 38 years.  We will comb through editions of Bondings 2.0’s predecessor: Bondings,  New Ways Ministry’s newsletter in paper format.   We began publishing Bondings in 1978. […]

  6. […] events from the past 38 years.  We will comb through editions of Bondings 2.0’s predecessor: Bondings,  New Ways Ministry’s newsletter in paper format.   We began publishing Bondings in 1978. […]

  7. […] events from the past 38 years.  We will comb through editions of Bondings 2.0’s predecessor: Bondings,  New Ways Ministry’s newsletter in paper format.   We began publishing Bondings in 1978. […]

  8. […] events from the past 38 years.  We will comb through editions ofBondings 2.0’s predecessor:  Bondings,  New Ways Ministry’s newsletter in paper format.   We began publishing Bondings in 1978. […]

  9. […] around, I had my very first post for a blog I dubbed Bondings 2.0.  The Bondings part of the name was taken from New Ways Ministry’s paper newsletter, published continuously since 1978. […]

  10. […] events from the past 38 years.  We will comb through editions ofBondings 2.0’s predecessor:  Bondings,  New Ways Ministry’s newsletter in paper format.   We began publishing Bondings in 1978. […]

  11. […] events from the past 38 years.  We will comb through editions ofBondings 2.0’s predecessor:  Bondings,  New Ways Ministry’s newsletter in paper format.   We began publishing Bondings in 1978. […]

  12. […] events from the past 38 years.  We will comb through editions ofBondings 2.0’s predecessor:  Bondings,  New Ways Ministry’s newsletter in paper format.   We began publishing Bondings in 1978. […]

  13. […] events from the past 38 years.  We will comb through editions of Bondings 2.0’s predecessor: Bondings,  New Ways Ministry’s newsletter in paper format.   We began publishing Bondings in 1978. […]

  14. […] events from the past 38 years.  We will comb through editions ofBondings 2.0’s predecessor: Bondings,  New Ways Ministry’s newsletter in paper format.   We began publishing Bondings in 1978. […]

  15. […] events from the past 38 years.  We will comb through editions ofBondings 2.0’s predecessor:  Bondings,  New Ways Ministry’s newsletter in paper format.   We began publishing Bondings in 1978. […]

  16. […] events from the past 38 years.  We will comb through editions of Bondings 2.0’s predecessor:  Bondings,  New Ways Ministry’s newsletter in paper format.   We began publishing Bondings in 1978. […]

  17. […] events from the past 38 years.  We will comb through editions of Bondings 2.0’s predecessor:  Bondings,  New Ways Ministry’s newsletter in paper format.   We began publishing Bondings in 1978. […]

  18. […] events from the past 38 years.  We will comb through editions of Bondings 2.0’s predecessor:  Bondings,  New Ways Ministry’s newsletter in paper format.   We began publishing Bondings in 1978. […]

  19. […] is from that direct statement that, in 1977, Sister Jeannine Gramick and Father Robert Nugent borrowed the term “new ways” to identify their newly established educational ministry for the church and lesbian/gay community: […]

  20. […] about how “New Ways Ministry” and “Bondings 2.0” got their names?  Click here for an […]

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