JOIN US AS WE WALK TOGETHER! WE ARE A SYNODAL CHURCH!
INVITE YOUR FRIENDS, FAMILY, COLLEAGUES!
SIGNUP
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
FutureChurch's Synod Resource was not only posted on the Vatican website, it was also included in the official Synod newsletter as a model for the wider church. We thank you for all you do to walk together as we shape the future of our Church!
SIX WEDNESDAYS IN LENT TWO SESSIONS EACH WEDNESDAY FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE
MARCH 2 (12pm EST or 7pm EST) The Eucharist & Parish Closings MARCH 9 (12pm EST or 7pm EST) The Future of Priesthood MARCH 16 (12pm EST or 7pm EST) Women as Co-Equals MARCH 23 (12pm EST or 7pm EST) Lay Leadership MARCH 30 (12pm EST or 7pm EST) Racial Justice APRIL 6 (12pm EST or 7pm EST) Faith & Political Life
SESSIONS ARE HELD AT 12:00pm EST & 7:00pm EST EACH WEDNESDAY. CHOOSE THE TIME THAT IS BEST FOR YOU!
The 2023 Synod of Bishops in Rome may be one of the most important events in the life of the Church since Vatican II. Pope Francis has asked bishops and church leaders to gather the "sense of the faithful" on a wide variety of important issues. And he has made provisions for the many Catholics who are excluded and who may not be heard because their bishops are not engaging in the process in a meaningful way.
This is a very important and a prime opportunity to walk together and help shape the future of the church.
The first phase of this process began at the local level in October 2021 and will continue until August 2022. The input that is gathered in this first phase will be sent to the Synod of Bishops in Rome so that they can develop a working document for their international gathering of bishops in October 2023.
FutureChurch will join this effort. We will be holding discernment sessions, carefully gathering your faith-filled insights on the issues you care about most, and putting together a report with your input to send to Rome as they prepare the initial working document.
We will:
1. Hold our discernment sessions on Wednesdays during Lent/
2. Compile your ideas on a number of topic into one report during the time between Easter and Pentecost.
3. Send our report with your discernment to the Synod office in Rome, to the U.S. bishops and the USCCB, and to the Apostolic nuncio on Pentecost, as a contribution to the worldwide synod, and as a symbol of our active witness to the Spirit of Pentecost in our Church today.
Please plan on joining us for these important discernment sessions. Your voice is critical as we shape the future church together.
|
|
|
|
|
|
LEARN ABOUT THE SYNOD AND VATICAN II YOU CAN STILL JOIN!
|
|
|
|
You can still join! Our last two sessions will be rescheduled soon! 7pm EST
February 2, 2022 at 7pm EST February 9, 2022 at 7pm EST February 16, 2022 at 7pm EST (Will be rescheduled soon) February 23, 2022 at 7pm EST (Will be rescheduled soon)
NOTE: Sr. Maureen will be returning to offer the final two sessions in the not-too-distant future. She is getting well! Thank you for your prayers!
You can find the first two sessions with video and notes and all of her previous Vatican II sessions here.
Join FutureChurch and Sr. Maureen Sullivan, OP for this four-part series exploring Vatican II, the Synod, and the Future of the Catholic Church.
Sr. Maureen joins us again for another engaging four-week series exploring Vatican II documents as the foundation for the 2023 Synod. Without doubt, the upcoming Synod is the most important gathering in the recent history of the church and the most promising since the 1962 -1965 Second Vatican Council.
Vatican II produced a charter for the Church to move from the rigid, hierarchical model espoused by Pius IX at Vatican I (1869-70) to the collegial, "communio" model that emerged under John XXIII. Pope Francis has invested enormous energy in moving the church back on course with his emphasis on Vatican II. The 2023 Synod is the culmination of his efforts offering the promise of an authentically synodal church where women, and men, both lay and ordained, led by the Spirit, guide and shape the direction of the church.
Participants will explore a number of Vatican II documents and come to understand how Vatican II serves as the foundation for the upcoming 2023 Synod on Communion, Participation, and Mission.
As we get more familiar with the documents of Second Vatican Council and engage in the synod process, we make the Vatican II Church a greater reality today.
|
|
|
|
|
|
April 5 & April 26, 2022 at 8:00pm EST
Most Catholics know the importance of religious sisters in their communities and in their lives. Older Catholics were often taught by religious women while younger Catholics may know religious women because of their ministry and leadership in their parishes and their work in the community. Still, many Catholics are limited in their understanding of the scope and magnitude of the pioneering efforts of Catholic women religious in the United States. The stereotype of the obedient Catholic nun who unquestioningly submits to clerical male authority still lurks in the Catholic imagination.
Professor Margaret Susan Thompson is an expert in the history of Catholic women religious in the United States. Her decades long research spans the origins of women's religious life, the often-treacherous foundings of the first North American communities, the lives of pioneer nuns, ethnic and assimilation issues, tensions with clergy, Vatican II and its impacts, current circumstances, and much more. In this two-part presentation she will show us how the history of the Catholic Church in the United States was indelibly shaped by the contributions of sisters - by their work in the parochial school system, their founding and administration of hundreds of hospitals, and untold numbers of charitable organizations. These ministries have transformed the lives of millions of Catholics and the social and humanitarian character of the nation itself. Sisters also have long been advocates for social justice, and unlike most priests, have always provided services not only for Catholics but for the entire population.
As laypeople, like most Catholics, sisters have experienced the impact of "engendered power" applied to them by generations of priests and prelates. This presentation will reveal the perhaps surprising history of their resistance and suggest ways we can all learn from their experience as we work collaboratively to build a future church that is more egalitarian and supportive for all believers.
Biography:
Margaret S. Thompson is Associate Professor of History and Political Science at Syracuse University Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. She is also the Senior Research Associate at the Campbell Public Affairs Institute.
Prof. Thompson was trained as a political historian, with a focus on the nineteenth-century United States and, particularly, the Congress. Her first book, The “Spider Web”: Congress and Lobbying in the Age of Grant (Cornell University Press), reflects both her scholarly and hands-on experience, the latter as American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow. Recently, Professor Thompson’s work has focused on the history of American Catholic nuns. She has written and lectured extensively on the subject, and has an 18-lecture audio series available through NowYouKnowMedia.com. Her research is from an explicitly feminist perspective, emphasizing the agency and social significance of sisters to American religious and secular history. As a result of this research, she has had the privilege of speaking internationally as well as across the U.S., and has served as a consultant to numerous documentarians and religious communities. Her forthcoming book, The Yoke of Grace: American Nuns and Social Change, 1809-1917, is under contract with Oxford University Press.
|
|
|
|
|
|
April 28, 2022 at 8:00pm EST
Doctoral candidate Elizabeth Schrader and Prof. Joan Taylor will share important findings from their research on Mary Magdalene.
While it is common today to refer to Jesus’s disciple Μαρία[μ] ἡ Μαγδαληνή as Mary “of Magdala,” with Magdala identified as a Galilean city named Tarichaea, what do our earliest Christian sources actually indicate about the meaning of this woman’s name? Examination of the Gospel of Luke, Origen, Eusebius, Macarius Magnes, and Jerome, as well as evidence in hagiography, pilgrimage, and diverse literature, reveals multiple ways that the epithet ἡ Μαγδαληνή can be understood. While Mary sometimes was believed to come from a place called “Magdala” or “Magdalene,” the assumption was that it was a small and obscure village, its location unspecified or unknown. Given the widespread understanding that Mary Magdalene was the sister of Martha, it could even be equated with Bethany. However, Jerome thought that the epithet was a reward for Mary’s faith and actions, not something indicative of provenance: Mary “of the Tower.” No early Christian author identifies a city (Tarichaea) called “Magdala” by the Sea of Galilee, even when they knew the area well. A pilgrim site on ancient ruins, established as “Magdala” by the mid-sixth century, was visited by Christians at least into the fourteenth century, and thus the name is remembered today. In view of the earlier evidence of Origen and Jerome, however, the term ἡ Μαγδαληνή may be based on an underlying Aramaic word meaning “the magnified one” or “tower-ess,” and is therefore best left untranslated.
https://scholarlypublishingcollective.org/sblpress/jbl/article/140/4/751/293542/The-Meaning-of-Magdalene-A-Review-of-Literary
Biographical information
Elizabeth Schrader
Oregon-raised and now based in Durham, NC, Elizabeth "Libbie" Schrader is a doctoral candidate in Early Christianity at Duke University. Her studies focus on Mary Magdalene, the Gospel of John, textual criticism, and feminist theology. Schrader has recently transitioned to religious scholarship after a long career as a singer/songwriter. Her research is already receiving critical acclaim as she advances new theories about the origins of Mary Magdalene.
Prof. Joan Taylor
After a BA degree at Auckland University, New Zealand, Joan completed post-graduate studies at the University of Otago and then went to the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem (Kenyon Institute) as Annual Scholar in 1986. She undertook a PhD at New College, Edinburgh University, and was appointed in 1992 to a position of lecturer (subsequently senior lecturer) at the University of Waikato, New Zealand, in the departments of both Religious Studies and History. In 1995 she won an Irene Levi-Sala Award in Israel’s archaeology, for the book version of her PhD thesis, Christians and the Holy Places (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993, rev. 2003). In 1996-7 she was Visiting Lecturer and Research Associate in Women’s Studies in Religion at Harvard Divinity School, a position she held in association with a Fulbright Award. She has also been Honorary Research Fellow in the Departments of History and Jewish Studies at University College London. She has taught at King’s College London since 2009.
Joan’s approach is multi-disciplinary; she works in literature, language, history and archaeology. She has written numerous books and articles in her fields of interest.
- The New Testament and other early Christian texts within their wider social, historical and cultural contexts, with a special interest in archaeological evidence.
- The historical figures of Jesus of Nazareth, John the Baptist, Judas Iscariot, Paul, Pontius Pilate, Mary Magdalene, and other New Testament persons, both in terms of the ancient evidence and how they have been constructed over time, including in modern literature and film.
- Second Temple Judaism, particularly the Jewish legal schools (Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, ‘Zealots’) and popular religious movements.
- The Dead Sea Scrolls and the archaeology of Qumran.
- Alexandrian Judaism, Philo of Alexandria, and the ‘Therapeutae’
- Women and gender within early Judaism and Christianity, especially regarding women in leadership roles.
- Jewish-Christianity and early Christian constructions of history and orthodoxy.
- Comparative Graeco-Roman religion and philosophy: literary, epigraphical and archaeological evidence.
- The archaeology and history of Christian holy places and travel to Palestine over the centuries, with special interest in the sites of Golgotha, Gethsemane, Eleona, Nazareth, Capernaum and Bethlehem, as well as historical geography.
- Reception exegesis: using creative artefacts to reflect on texts and history
|
|
|
|
|
|
May 5, 12, 19 2022 at 8:00pm EST
Session one: May 5 at 8:00pm EST All about Eve: The Latest Word on the First Lady (without Powerpoint)
Eve has a bad rap in Jewish and Christian tradition: seductress, first sinner, cause of male domination––the list goes on. But does she deserve it? This presentation will take advantage of the fact that we have just marked the 100th anniversary of the historic 19th Amendment to review some of the ways the suffragettes tried to deal with the problem of Eve in the Eden narrative. Then it will show how biblical scholarship of the 21st century rescues Eve from notoriety and even elevates her above Adam!
Session two: May 12 at 8:00pm EST Work and Worth: Women’s Household Activities in Ancient Israel (with PowerPoint)
Women in the biblical period were just “wives and mothers.” Right? Not at all. Rather, they had important economic and social roles. Using archaeological materials as well as biblical texts, this presentation examines AND evaluates women’s contributions to everyday life. This approach shows that women had a greater role in Israelite culture than might otherwise have been imagined.
Session three: May 19 at 8:00pm EST Archaeology and the Hidden Religious Culture of Israelite Women (with PowerPoint)
Who were the most important religious figures in ancient Israel? Most people would say that the priests were. But they would be wrong. The major arena of religious life for most people in the biblical period was the household, and the major figures in household religious activities were women. This lecture takes you into the Israelite household, largely invisible in the Bible, and presents an array of archaeological materials and fascinating ethnographic data to reveal women’s household religious activities.
Biography: CAROL MEYERS is the Mary Grace Wilson Professor Emerita of Religious Studies at Duke University. She received the A.B. with honors from Wellesley College and the M.A. and Ph.D. in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies from Brandeis University. Meyers has published more than 450 articles, reports, reference-book entries, and reviews; and she has authored, co-authored, or edited twenty-two books. Her 2013 book, Rediscovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context, is a landmark study of women in ancient Israelite society. Meyers has worked on numerous digs since she was an undergraduate and has co-directed several archaeological projects in Israel. She has been a frequent consultant for media productions relating to archaeology and the Bible, including A&E’s Mysteries of the Bible series, DreamWorks’s “Prince of Egypt,” NOVA’s “The Bible’s Buried Secrets,” and several National Geographic documentaries. She has served as President of the Society of Biblical Literature and is currently a trustee of the American Society of Overseas Research, the Dead Sea Scrolls Foundation, and the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem.
|
|
|
|
|
|
May 10, 2022 at 8:00pm EST
In her critically acclaimed book Crispina and Her Sisters, author Christine Schenk, C.S.J. explores the archaeological and literary evidence for women’s leadership in early Christianity. Schenk’s original research into visual imagery found on burial artifacts demonstrates that women were far more influential in the ancient world than has been commonly recognized. Yet their paradigm-shifting witness has been all but erased from Christian memory. Join us for a fascinating visual journey and consider what it may mean for women and men today.
Biography Christine Schenk, CSJ has worked as a nurse midwife to low-income families, a community organizer, an award-winning writer-researcher, and the founding director of an international church reform organization, FutureChurch. Her first book Crispina and Her Sisters: Women and Authority in Early Christianity (Fortress Press, 2017) received a first place in history from the Catholic Press Association and her most recent work, To Speak the Truth in Love: A Biography of Sr. Theresa Kane RSM (OrbisBooks 2019) received first place awards from The Association of Catholic Publishers and the Catholic Press Association. She writes a regular column for the National Catholic Reporter and is one of three nuns featured in the award-winning documentary Radical Grace.
Please join us for this informative event!
|
|
|
|
|
|
May 24, 2022 at 8:00pm EST
Join Professor Patel as we explore her research showing that in the early church, women served clerical roles as ordained ministers called deacons and presbyters, both subordinate to the higher-ranking bishops. Scholars agree that we should think of Christianities in the plural when we think of the era of Christian origins. There was never one Christianity, in other words. Women’s clerical leadership, likewise, spanned a range from women being thought of as prophetic mouthpieces for Christ himself to being relegated to silence during worship. In this talk, we’ll explore evidence supporting women’s clerical leadership from lesser-known sources and some of the ways we moderns have sought to erase this evidence in order to advance the idea of a coherent Christianity stretching back to the apostolic age. From manuscript variants, to prophetic utterings, to the stories of women martyrs and “monks,” we’ll survey the various ways women
could occupy leadership roles in ancient Christianities and consider the role of history in shaping the present.
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/recovering-the-female-clerics-of-the-early-church/
Biography
Shaily Patel is assistant professor of early Christianity in the Department of Religion and Culture at Virginia Tech. Her research focuses on the diversity of early Christianity and how discourses of magic helped solidify Christian group identities. Currently, she is working on a book called Smoke and Mirrors: Discourses of Magic in Early Petrine Traditions.
Please join us for this remarkable event.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Flora X. Tang Preaches for the Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Flora Tang reflects:
...we today can be reminded that we as gentiles and Christians are not more worthy of God’s love than our Jewish siblings. And that interpretations that blame Jewish people for rejecting or killing Jesus easily lead us to the sin of anti-Semitism.
In fact, Jesus’ experience of being rejected in today’s gospel prompts us to ask ourselves: how often do we reject and turn away people in our lives because they no longer fit the image of who we think they are? How often do we also make the mistake of looking at our loved ones, and saying something along the lines of “isn’t this the son of Joseph?” or “why isn’t this person the same as who they had been before?” or “why has this person changed?”
Whether intentionally or not, we may think or say these things when we look at our children who have grown up to have different convictions, and we lament or become angry at them for being different from how we raised them. We may think these things when interact with our elderly family members with dementia, who behave in ways so different than they did before when they were healthy. Or, when our friends come out to us as queer or transgender, we might take a while to accept them for who they are. Sometimes, we might end up rejecting people whom we used to love, simply because they are or act differently today.
We see a similar storyline in our first reading from Jeremiah. The prophet Jeremiah also experiences opposition from his own people, perhaps because they also did not expect him to become a prophet, or perhaps he defied their expectations a little too much. While his people reject him and came after him, God does not leave Jeremiah alone in his rejection, but strengthens him and protects him against his enemies.
Sometimes we might find ourselves in the position of the townspeople of Jesus and Jeremiah. We might find ourselves clinging onto the way things used to be, and the way people used to be. That’s normal, because change is never easy and we might also be scared of how fast things are changing. In these moments, the gospels today remind us it’s not just about our feelings: because it is painful and scary for Jeremiah to experience rejection, as it is painful for Jesus to be forced out of his hometown. That in these moments, God is calling us to welcome our friends and family members for the way they are now different, and listen to what they have to say to us.
Sometimes, we might find ourselves in the position of those who are rejected, of Jesus or Jeremiah in today’s readings. We go home to a place we love, but are rejected by our loved ones for who we are today or the things we do. God reminds us that in these moments of rejection, God is on our side, and is proud that we are who we are now. God is proud of us for speaking truth to power, for proclaiming liberation for the oppressed, and for doing the works of mercy. Even when our loved ones and home communities aren’t ready to embrace our changes, God is.
At the end of our gospel reading, Jesus passed through the midst of the people and went away. In walking away, he began his ministry, found his new family in his disciples and friends: friends who gave him room to proclaim the gospel, friends who do not underestimate him or reject him for who he is. We learn from Jesus’ leaving Nazareth that in situations where we are not accepted at all and are experiencing harm, that it is okay to set boundaries, walk away, and find new communities of belonging.
|
|
|
|
|
|
WOMEN WITNESSES FOR RACIAL JUSTICE RESOURCES
|
|
|
|
In Celebration of Women Witnesses for Racial Justice
Sr. Thea Bowman radically changed the church as a Black Woman Religious who knew both God and her people. She spoke bodly to bishops and seekers alike. This prophet of God was born on December 29, 1937. As we celebrate her birth and her life , let's share her wisdom and her indomitable Spirit.
|
|
|
|
|
|
HOLY FAMILY CAMPAIGN! TAKE ACTION TO END SUBORDINATION IN OUR LECTIONARY!
|
|
|
|
Take Action!
Lectionary readings that explicitly promote subordination of women and still authorize slavery should be excluded from our liturgical life.
It is tragic, even scandalous, that in the 21st century, the Catholic Church, which incorporates the transformative wisdom of the Second Vatican Council along with a challenging and robust catalogue of Catholic Social Teaching, continues to subject Catholics to lectionary texts that explicitly encourage the subordination of women and enslaved peoples. Yet, these exhortations are part of our Sunday and weekday readings -- teachings that Catholics hear and assimilate.
Learn more from our educational resource and find downloadable letters for the USCCB Committee on Divine Liturgy and for your bishop, priest, and local newspapers.
Please join our campaign to reform the Catholic Lectionary today!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|