Disrupting the “In Group”
In their view, to be “chosen” means there must be some people who are left out. Full acceptance without discrimination seems to threaten their own inclusion.
Angie Howard-McParland (she/hers) has worked in various forms of campus and parish ministry for over fifteen years. Currently, she is the Justice Resource Manager for the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas. Previously, she served at La Salle Academy in Providence, RI, the Catholic Community at Brown University and Rhode Island School of Design, and at Bentley University in Waltham, MA. In parishes, she has worked as a youth minister, adult education coordinator, social justice minister, and pastoral associate. She is passionate about the intersection of religion and sexuality and feminist and liberationist understandings of Catholicism, earning a B.A. from Centre College in English and Religion and a MDiv. from Vanderbilt Divinity School. She lives in Providence, RI with her three children.
In their view, to be “chosen” means there must be some people who are left out. Full acceptance without discrimination seems to threaten their own inclusion.
Jesus’s condemnations for the Pharisees center on their emphasis of appearances over adherence to God’s desires for justice, love, and mercy.
Catholics should not be strangers to the deep connection between body and soul, refusing a binary that suggests we are composed of two separated entities. As Catholics, embodiment is central to the human experience and to God’s participation in the world, so how we treat the bodies of ourselves and others matters deeply.
The Vatican’s has intervened to stop a theologian from becoming dean of an Italian seminary apparently over his views on sexuality, which include LGBTQ-positive writings. The debacle has raised concerns about academic freedom in the church and the relationship between the academy and the Roman Curia.
So many of the conversations about and hopes for the Synod on Synodality’s global assembly in Rome this October have focused on what will be gained as the Catholic Church becomes more of a synodal institution. But one gay Catholic points out that if the church wants to move towards Pope Francis’ synodal vision, it will have to also let go of some longheld ideas.
Catholic theologians are recognizing how queer theory and queer theology can provide understandings of both God and humanity beyond dualistic ideas about gender.
In the National Catholic Reporter, Rebecca Bratten Weiss explores the way that claims of “gender ideology” by Pope Francis and other church leaders fail to reflect gender realities in nature in favor of the church’s doctrinal claims.
M. Therese Lysaught, a bioethicist and theologian, comprehensively dissected the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Doctrine’s recent statement that seeks to stop Catholic healthcare institutions from providing gender-affirming care.
“Does God have a gender?” Sr. Barbara E. Reid, OP, asks this question in a recent U.S. Catholic column—and her answer has tremendous relevance to LGBTQ+ issues.
Global Catholic LGBTQ+ advocates have expressed concern about church leaders’ actions in two African countries, which are seemingly at odds with Pope Francis’ condemnation of laws that criminalize homosexuality.
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