NEWS NOTES: Transgender Lawmaker, Women’s Ordination Scholarship, and More
Here are some items that you might find of interest:
Danica Roem
1) The Commonwealth of Virginia elected its first transgender state legislator this past week. Danica Roem, who has strong Catholic roots, defeated incumbent Bob Marshall, a Catholic who proudly described himself as Virginia’s “chief homophobe” because of his strong anti-LGBT record. Bondings 2.0 interviewed Roem in September. You can read that post here.
2) The Women’s Ordination Conference recently awarded their Lucile Murray Durkin Scholarship Fund for Women Discerning Priestly Ordination for the first time to three women studying for priestly ministry: Elaina Jo Polovick and Lisa Cathelyn, Master of Divinity students at the Jesuit School of Theology at Santa Clara in Berkeley, California, and Sarah Holst, a Master of Divinity student at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities, Minnesota. Polovick was a contributor to Bondings 2.0’s 2017 Lenten reflection series. You can read her post here.
Gregory Baum
3) Theologian Gregory Baum recently passed away at 94. In 1974, Baum was the first Catholic theologian to critique the Catholic Church’s ban on sexual expression between people of the same gender. He came out publicly as a gay man for the first time in an autobiography he published earlier this year, entitled The Oil Has Not Run Dry: The Story of My Theological Pathway.
4) The National Catholic Reporter released a podcast as a follow-up to a recent essay by Mary Hunt, feminist theologian, Marianne Duddy-Burke, DignityUSA executive director, and Jamie Manson, book review editor, in which they called for a new dialogue in the church on LGBTQ issues. You can read Bondings 2.o’s comments on the essay by clicking here.
—Francis DeBernardo, New Ways Ministry, November 12, 2017
A word about Gregory Baum. I and many others in Toronto knew Gregory Baum. He had a manner that was always brightly engaged. He liked people and was never arrogant or self serving. His integrity lay in seeking wisdom in the truth through new ways of seeing and doing theology. He was never intimidated by Church authorities because he was alive to the big picture. He was a true pioneer for us in the LGBTQ Community by initiating the dialogue of what could be in the Church. He never settled for merely some sort of status quo. He was a person of peace and this peace and enthusiasm flowed out from him. A Mentor and a model Christian.