Blessing of the Week |
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This weekend Deb and I are excited to introduce you to Olivia Hastie, who has joined the FutureChurch staff as Program Associate! In her role, Olivia will be helping to expand and sustain our online presentations and reform advocacy campaigns. During the summer, Olivia will split her time between FutureChurch and her L'Arche community. And during the fall semester, she will split her time between her studies and FutureChurch.
As we continue on our synodal path and look toward the future with hope, we are blessed to have Olivia add her gifts and passion to our cause! Here's a brief introduction from Olivia:
Hello FutureChurch community! My name is Olivia Hastie and I am a delighted to be joining FutureChurch as a program associate starting this week. I was born, adopted, and raised in the Boston area, got my bachelor’s degree in religious studies from the College of the Holy Cross and am now attending Harvard Divinity School where I am in my second year of my Master of Theological Studies. I look forward to one day earning my PhD in theological ethics. On a day off, you can find my belting out show tunes in my car, grabbing an iced coffee from a local café, or spending time with my friends and family.
Like many, my journey through Catholicism has been one with many twists, turns, bumps, and graces. The God of unfailing, unfathomable, and boundless love continues to offer me critical and curious ways of engaging with her. I went to an Opus Dei high school that enforced a narrative on me that God is punitive, calculated, and angry. When I got to Holy Cross, the Jesuits opened my eyes to a theology and an understanding of God that liberates humanity through love, good works, and service. It was at Holy Cross that I encountered L’Arche and understood the importance of finding God in the face of the other.
L’Arche is a community for adults with and without intellectual disabilities who live together in friendship. Many of you may know L’Arche either through experience or perhaps the devastating reports released regarding L’Arche’s founder. Diving deeper into the community, it is easy to see that the founder’s legacy is not the one that sticks. It is the story of the adults with disabilities. It’s a hard job, but over the years has proved time and time again to be the space where I encounter God most viscerally. Even on the days when nothing good happens, I root myself in solidarity and immersion. Far beyond the classroom or in the pages of a book, I learn what it means to go to the margins: not to solve or fix situations, but rather to be with people in their concrete lived experiences. It is there, that God reveals her loving and truest self to me.
Joining the team at FutureChurch feels like a dream because it synthesizes and renews my deep love for God, for the Catholic Church, and my embodied desire for justice. My passions center at the intersection of gender and the human body. As a plus-size woman pursuing a career within Catholic theology, I am painfully aware of the hurdles in my way. In my work and life, I hope to cultivate space that examines how the world views body size, body types, appearances, and food choices as a means of determining a person’s (specifically women/trans/non-binary bodies) embodied morality. Rooted in the imago dei, I think we can all agree that for God it doesn’t matter - human beings are human beings, loved unconditionally and fully regardless of who they are or how they appear.
In her song August, Taylor Swift sings about “living for the hope of it all.” And in this time of renewal, change, and synodality, I truly am “living for the hope of it all” and look forward to embodying the hope for a more loving, open, and welcoming Church.
Thank you for your already warm welcome to this wonderful space!
Welcome, Olivia! You are a blessing to all of us!
If you would like to send Olivia a note of welcome, she can be reached at olivia@futurechurch.org.
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Co-Director |
Russ Petrus |
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The Just Word
Writing for the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Amy Shaw invites to explore children’s wisdom, and how slavery and racism have so deeply damaged the United States, with the help of Wendell Berry; engage the concept of synodality in the Catholic Church through the Synod on Young People and Pope Francis’s response; and embody the wisdom of youth with the help of Greta Thunberg, anti-Nazi youth groups in 1930s-40s Germany, and Norman Rockwell’s artwork.
Today’s scripture proclaims that we all start from a place of sincerity, from a time when we knew right and wrong and hadn’t yet muddled it with excuses and selfish justifications. Although we can’t return to that time, we can be certain that there is a seed of honesty and moral clarity within each of us, that we are still capable of growth at any stage in life. We have a responsibility to clear the way for future generations – not to steer their path, but to free them from the burdens of debt, overwork, poverty, incarceration – so that they have the freedom to explore, create, and choose for themselves.
Amy Shaw is a Catholic Worker in New York. She is currently unemployed.
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Catholic Women Preach
Preaching for the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Shannon K. Evans offers a reflection on receiving the loving kindness of God through others:
"Because if it is true of you that you are the hands and feet of God, then it is also true of those who touch and serve you. It is also true that when they hug you, when they cook for you, when they mail you a card, when they pick you up a coffee unasked – when they lean over in their Spiderman pajamas and kiss your cheek, that it is God’s tenderness doing so to you. Helping you believe all over again. Offering the rest promised to you. Reminding you that the burden is light."
Shannon K. Evans is the spirituality and culture editor at the National Catholic Reporter and author of the books "Feminist Prayers for My Daughter: Powerful Petitions for Every Stage of Her Life" and "Rewilding Motherhood: Your Path to an Empowered Feminine Spirituality." With interest in ecofeminism, contemplative practice, and social change, Shannon leads workshops and retreats across the country that spark curiosity and compassion.
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SynodWatch Session 2: Co-Responsibility in Mission |
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This second session covers the second priority in the document - "Co-responsibility in Mission." FutureChurch co-directors, Russ Petrus and Deborah Rose, are joined by Kate McElwee and Luke Hansen, who will offer their insights and commentary.
- Kate McElwee is the executive director of the Women's Ordination Conference, a grassroots-driven movement that promotes activism, dialogue and prayerful witness to call for women's ordination and gender equity in the Roman Catholic Church. Kate earned a Bachelor of Arts in Religion and a Certificate in Buddhist Studies from Mount Holyoke College, in South Hadley Massachusetts, USA, and a Masters degree, with distinction from the School of Oriental and African Studies in (SOAS - University of London) in International Human Rights Law.
- Luke Hansen is a campus minister and religious studies teacher at St. Ignatius College Preparatory in San Francisco. He has a master’s degree in social philosophy from Loyola University Chicago, a Master of Divinity degree from the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, California, and a Licentiate in Sacred Theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. Luke has worked as a journalist, prison chaplain and advocate for social and ecclesial change. He is a former co-director of the Discerning Deacons project, which engages Catholics in the question of women and diaconate. He also worked as an editor for the Jesuit journals America and La Civiltà Cattolica. He has reported from the Vatican, Honduras, El Salvador and Guantánamo Bay, and he has won several awards from the Catholic Press Association for his writing.
Please join us this Wednesday, July 12th at 7pm ET as we discuss "Participation, governance and authority." Deb and Russ will be joined by canon lawyer, Sr. Lynn Jarrell, OSU; Rev. Joe Healey, a Maryknoll priest who has served in Africa and has expertise in Small Christian Communities; and Ellie Hidalgo, co-director of Discerning Deacons, who has just returned from the Amazon region.
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Reclaiming Mary Magdalene |
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Take Action: Sign Our Petition |
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Tell the Whole Story About Mary Magdalene on Easter Sunday |
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Telling the true story of Mary Magdalene can not only vindicate her memory, but also help reclaim the rightful role of women in our Church.
Easter is the most sacred of all Sundays in the Church year. Yet, when Catholics gather for Mass on Easter Sunday, they do not hear the full story of the Resurrection. They do not hear the inspiring story of Mary Magdalene’s witness of the Risen Christ or Christ’s commission to Mary Magdalene to proclaim the Resurrection to the other disciples. Even though Pope Francis raised her memorial to a feast day in 2016 and affirmed her role as the Apostle of the Apostles, her story is cut short on the holiest day of the year.
Please join us in calling on the global Church to tell the full story of Mary Magdalene’s apostolic witness to the Resurrection every Easter so that all Catholics can be inspired by the Good News of her faith, courage, and ministry.
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July 18, 2023 | 7pm ET
Portraying Mary Magdalene Today: The Movie Version(s)
Mary Magdalene has been a figure of religious and artistic inspiration for Christians for over 2000 years. In the Bible, she is a disciple of Jesus and a key witness at his crucifixion and resurrection. In the Western Church her role and character changed and she became known as a penitent prostitute. In medieval art, she is often portrayed naked, covered only with her long hair. In more modern versions, she has been portrayed as the romantic partner and wife of Jesus. What is the truth?
Professor Joan Taylor of King's College is an expert in the field and shares her insights into some of the images of Mary Magdalene that we receive today.
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July 20, 2023 | 7pm ET
FutureChurch's Annual Mary Magdalene Celebration
Join FutureChurch and women from around the world as Kelly Meraw leads us in a Celebration of Mary Magdalene: "Rethinking Women’s Participation - Stories of Synodality Then and Now."
We'll honor Mary Magdalene's witness and its lessons for us today as we seek to become a more synodal Church. The voices of Catholics around the world calling for greater equality for women in the Church in “Enlarge the Space of Our Tent” will guide us through our prayer service as we highlight women’s synodal encounters with Jesus, then, and the synodal encounters in the heartfelt sharing of the People of God, now.
Join us for this beautiful prayer experience and one of FutureChurch's biggest events of the year!
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July 11, 2023 | 7pm ET |
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Gender and the Role of Women in Our Liturgical Life |
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Where are the women when it comes to the liturgical life of the Catholic Church? What role does gender play? How did our liturgical traditions develop? Our liturgical history has been shaped substantially by the invisibility and exclusion of women. How credible can this historical narrative be with so much of the Body of Christ missing?
Yale Divinity School Professor Teresa Berger has spent a lifetime examining both past and present liturgical developments from the perspective of women’s lives. In this presentation she will offer insights into the roles women played in Early Christianity, the history of women’s liturgical ministries, and the development of the calendar of saints and the uneven ways we have come to formally venerate women within the tradition.
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Wednesday, July 12th at 7pm ET |
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SynodWatch: Exploring the Working Document |
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On June 20, 2023 the Instrumentum Laboris (or working document) for the October 2023 General Assembly of the Synod on Communion, Participation and Mission was released. FutureChurch is hopeful that the document lays a strong foundation for achieving real progress on much needed reforms in the Church.
Join FutureChurch on this Wednesday, July 5, at 7pm ET as we discuss "Participation, governance and authority." Deb and Russ will be joined by:
- Sr. Lynn Jarrell, OSU, a canon lawyer who will address how canon law can be revised to support synodality.
- Rev. Joe Healey, MM, who has served in Africa and has expertise in Small Christian Communities, and will discuss synodality in the African experience
- Ellie Hidalgo, co-director of Discerning Deacons, who has just returned from the Amazon region, and share on synodality in the Amazon.
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Virtual Screening of The Doctrine of Discovery: Unmasking the Domination Code
July 17 | 8pm ET
Call to Action invites you to a virtual screening of The Doctrine of Discovery: Unmasking the Domination Code. Co-producer Steven Newcomb and Indigenous leader Shawna Bluestar Newcomb will introduce the film and participate in a short Q&A following the screening.
Details/Registration
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Women of the Church: 2023 National Conference
July 19-21 | Collegeville, MN
Sponsored by Saint John’s School of Theology and Seminary. The conference will do as St. Paul urged the early Roman Church: to Welcome Her and all her extraordinary gifts. Everyday, through diverse vocations, women share their leadership skills, liturgical and ministerial talents, theological insight, and prophetic imagination. Come celebrate these gifts and, in community with others, imagine a Church even more welcoming of women.
Details/Registration
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Boston College 14th Annual Mary Magdalene Celebration: Rereading Biblical Women
July 20, 12n-3pm | Hybrid In-person/Online
Inspired by diverse traditions and misinterpretations of Mary of Magdala, this presentation embarks on a rereading of select women in the Bible. Several biblical women, such as Hagar, Jezebel, and the Samaritan woman at the well, have been interpreted unfavorably and have been associated with negative attributes. In her presentation, Dr. Jaime L. Waters, associate professor of Old Testament, Boston College School of Theology and Ministry, rereads women to offer avenues of interpretation that honor women of the past and inspire readers today.
Details/Registration
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We seek changes that will provide all Roman Catholics the opportunity to participate fully in Church life and leadership. |
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FutureChurch is a national 501(c)(3) organization and your contribution is tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.
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