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  • 08/15/2022 1:09 AM | Paul J. Schutz

    Dear CTSA Colleagues,

    Julie Hanlon Rubio (JSTB/JSTSCU) and I are happy to announce the release of “Beyond Bad Apples: Understanding Clergy Perpetrated Sexual Abuse as a Structural Problem and Cultivating Strategies for Change.” Part of Fordham University’s Taking Responsibility project, this study synthesizes research on clericalism, structural theory, and sexual violence with data from an original survey of nearly 300 professional lay ministers on sex, gender, power, clericalism, and clergy perpetrated sexual abuse. We hope you’ll consider reading and sharing the report. 

    https://scu.edu/beyondbadapples 

    We pray that our work will contribute to a reduction in sexual violence in the Church and a future free from the challenges of clericalism. 

    With gratitude,
    Paul Schutz & Julie Rubio

  • 08/11/2022 6:16 PM | Maria-Pilar Aquino

    Opportunity for Publication, highly recommended:

    Please consider submitting essays for publication in the theological Journal Cuestiones Teológicas (Spanish, Portuguese, and English), indexed and external peer review. The journal's website reads as follows:  "The Cuestiones Teológicas Journal is a publication edited by the School of Theology of Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana. Its main topic is focused on the great areas of theological knowledge, Fundamental Theology, Dogmatic Theology, Biblical Theology, Moral Theology, Pastoral Theology and Church History, from interdisciplinary positions, seeking to generate an open dialogue with current culture. Its purpose is to present the results of researches developed by national and international researchers and professors, with a particular interest on presenting the aspects of the methodology and the methods used for the research, in order for them to contribute to the theological knowledge. Keywords: Fundamental Theology, Dogmatics, Bible, Moral, Pastoral, Church History, Spirituality, Interculturality."

    https://revistas.upb.edu.co/index.php/cuestiones/index

  • 08/10/2022 10:45 AM | Anonymous

    New Directions in Ecclesiology:
    The Contributions of Richard Gaillardetz

    September 23 - 24, 2022, In-person conference
    The Institution for the Liberal Arts, Boston College

    Boston College is hosting a conference in honor of CTSA member Richard Gaillardetz (CTSA President 2013-2014).  The events will occur in person in Gasson Hall, 100, on the Chestnut Hill campus of Boston College. They are free and open to the public, but registration for Saturday is required.

    About the Conference

    The author of nine books, editor of six others, and author of over a hundred articles, Prof Gaillardetz has been one of the most important voices of his generation in the development of ecclesiology, the interpretation and reception of Vatican II, and questions of authority in the church. His 1997 Teaching with Authority: A Theology of the Magisterium of the Church, is a standard text in its field and has remained in print for a quarter century. Others of his books have remained in print, or gone into second and revised editions, or been translated into other languages, and continue to define the parameters of their questions. The contributors to his edited volumes on Vatican II and ecclesiological topics include many of the most influential theologians actively writing in English in the field of ecclesiology today. He has also been a sought-after lecturer.

    Questions about the nature of religious authority and especially the authority of Catholic institutions are at the heart of Prof Gaillardetz’s work. Our Saturday event will feature two keynote addresses and three panel papers by senior and emerging scholars in the field of ecclesiology. They will examine Prof. Gaillardetz’s contributions to these questions, and their relevance to the growing edges of the field of ecclesiology.

    On the preceding evening, Friday, September 23, Prof. Gaillardetz will deliver a public lecture: “Loving and Reforming a Holy yet Broken Church.”

    These events will occur in person in Gasson Hall, 100, on the Chestnut Hill campus of Boston College. They are free and open to the public, but registration for Saturday is required:

    Link to Conference Details and to Access Registration Link


  • 08/08/2022 3:47 PM | Erin Lothes Biviano

    Dear CTSA members and friends,

    As you know there is a critically important climate bill going through Congress right now. It has passed the Senate and is now in the House.

    I ask you to consider if your institution can sign this open letter to Congress as a Catholic institution in support of essential climate action.  The USCCB is in support.  Please contact your President and Mission VPs.

    There really is no other political hope on the horizon.  Increasing the number of signatories to this letter is highly significant. 

    Thank you,

    Erin Lothes

    Linked here are the open letter developed by the Catholic Climate Covenant and sign on form .

     At the same time, you might ask for a meeting in the fall to discuss divestment, which is a significant action with implications for our students' future and our institutions' mission integrity.

    Update from the Covenant:

    Though you're likely well aware, it's worth repeating that this national legislation contains the most significant climate provisions in a generation, when the window of opportunity to prevent climate catastrophe is closing, and which if passed, will significantly reduce national carbon emissions, and revive U.S. leadership and potentially international commitments to the needed GHG reductions for the sake of the viability of our shared future.

    The Official Catholic Directory has emailed over 4800 Catholic leaders, asking them to sign their institutions onto the open letter to Congress. (The open letter and sign on form are on the advocacy page of the Godsplanet website, which is the US platform for the Vatican based Laudato Si Action Platform.)  

    Also noteworthy in this effort to have Congress pass climate solutions commensurate with the reality, is the strong parallel support from the USCCB.   The USCCB has revived their earlier action alert calling for $555b in climate change investments on their website again. 

    https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/08/07/us/climate-tax-deal-vote

    New York Times


  • 07/28/2022 7:07 AM | Anonymous

    CALL FOR PAPERS

    Annual Meeting of the Society for Christian Scholarship in Music

    Deadline for proposals, October 1, 2022

    Conference dates: March 2–4, 2023

    Conference web site: www.scsmusic.org

    Conference venue: Duke Divinity School, Durham, NC

    Individual papers, research posters, panels, and lecture recitals on any topic related to the study of music and Christianity are welcome. We invite submissions representing a variety of approaches and perspectives, including ethnomusicology, historical musicology, theory and analysis, philosophy, theology, liturgy, congregational music, as well as other methodologies. All submissions should have a clear title. Lecture-recital proposals should contain the list of pieces with approximate timings.

    SCSM encourages submissions from current graduate students. A $250 prize will be awarded for the best paper presented by a graduate student at the meeting. In addition, graduate students whose proposals are accepted are eligible to apply for travel assistance from the SCSM Graduate Student Travel Fund.

    Note: We are planning on an in-person meeting, along with some online offerings. When submitting a proposal, please indicate whether you intend to present in person or via online. (Changes in presentation format may be possible, but only up to a deadline to be determined by the program committee.) Regardless, all conference participants need to be available during the days of the conference for synchronous sessions.

    Please visit the conference website for proposal details. Please send submissions or questions to Mark Peters, program committee chair, at mark.peters@trnty.edu.


  • 07/19/2022 7:31 AM | Anonymous

    In the web article, Being Catholic Interreligiously, Michael Naughton interviews CTSA President Francis X. Clooney, S.J.  A link to the article is posted below.

    Michael Naughton, Being Catholic Interreligiously, (Harvard Divinity School, July 18, 2022):

    Being Catholic Interreligiously


  • 07/11/2022 8:44 PM | Miguel Diaz

    https://www.fordhampress.com/fordham-university-press-acquires-groundbreaking-series/

    FORDHAM UNIVERSITY PRESS ACQUIRES GROUNDBREAKING SERIES DISRUPTIVE CARTOGRAPHERS: DOING THEOLOGY LATINAMENTE

    New York — Fordham University Press (FUP) acquires Queer God de Amor by Latino     9781531502492 Fc

    theologian Miguel Díaz. The book is part of the Disruptive Cartographers: Doing Theology Latinamente series, which will also be moving to Fordham University Press from Orbis Books with this volume. Previous volumes include The Word Became Culture and the award-winning Revelation in the Vernacular.

    About the Series

    Disruptive Cartographers: Doing Theology Latinamente is multivolume series that re-maps theology and pushes out in new directions from varying coordinates across a spectrum of latinidad as lived in the USA. Authors reconfigure and disrupt key areas like revelation, eschatology, and trinity. Other volumes complicate and advance even further key themes of significance in Latin@ theologies, including the option for culture, religious diversity, and Mary.

    “Fordham University Press is excited to have acquired Queer God de Amor by Miguel Díaz and to have secured the rights to publish the Disruptive Cartographers: Doing Theology Latinamente series of which it is a part. The book and series are a perfect fit with our catalog and contribute to our mission of publishing boundary-breaking scholarship and supporting underrepresented voices. We welcome Dr. Díaz, together with his co-editors, Carmen M. Nanko-Fernández and Gary Riebe-Estrella, S.V.D., to the FUP community of authors and look forward to a successful and long-lasting collaboration.”

    Fredric Nachbaur, Director, Fordham University Press

    “The Disruptive Cartographers: Doing Theology Latinamente series reflects ethical and theological commitments to the invitation of Pope Francis “¡hagan lío!” As theologians and scholars arising from complex matrices of latinidad, lived and experienced in myriad modalities, we stir things up by retrieving resources from a rich diversity of Latin@ /Hispan@ traditioning. With particular attention to sources that may have been suppressed, erased, ignored, or overlooked, we explore in creative and interdisciplinary ways the stuff of lo cotidiano, daily life. We are excited about the prospect of pushing las fronteras en conjunto with Fordham University Press.”

    Carmen M. Nanko-Fernández, Founding Editor, Disruptive Cartographers

    About Fordham University Press

    Fordham University Press, established in 1907, is the seventh oldest university press in the country and the nation’s oldest Catholic university press. Fordham University Press not only represents and uphold the values and traditions of the University itself but also furthers those values and traditions through the dissemination of scholarly research and ideas. The Press publishes boundary-breaking print and digital books that bring recognition to itself, the University, and authors while balancing the need to publish in new formats and work collaboratively on and off campus. Its regional imprints, Empire State Editions and New York ReLit, and location in New York City’s Lincoln Center neighborhood reinforce the university’s motto, New York is My Campus, Fordham is My School.
    ___________________________________________________________________________________________________
    Queer God de Amor
    Miguel H. Díaz
    Fordham University Press; Paperback
    ISBN: 978-1-5315-0248-5 | Theology | Religion | LGBTQ Studies | $25.95
    160 pages, 5 ½ x 8 ½
    eBook Available
    Disruptive Cartographers: Doing Theology Latinamente
    Publication Date: September 13, 2022

    Media Contact: Kate O’Brien-Nicholson, Fordham University Press, bkaobrien@fordham.edu.



  • 06/30/2022 10:13 PM | Jaisy Joseph

    Hello Colleagues, 

    I wanted to share a link to the Synod Synthesis from the Archdiocese of Seattle, which serves as a summary of nearly 1,000 listening sessions that we conducted in western Washington. It provides an honest portrait of 11,000 Catholics in the area and spurs the diocese to greater outreach and response to the various issues that are named. This synthesis has also been sent to the USCCB.

    In a homily that ended this diocesan phase of Pope Francis' global synod on synodality, Archbishop Paul Etienne expressed how this document calls us to walk together on a path marked by pain and love, much like the way of the cross and of the eucharist. I would love to know of any thoughts or feedback you may have on the document, which I can relay to the Seattle Archdiocesan pastoral council. 

    Thank you, 

    Jaisy




  • 06/30/2022 12:44 PM | Caesar A. Montevecchio

    The Catholic Peacebuilding Network (CPN), with over two dozen co-sponsors, hosted the virtual conference Catholic Peacebuilding in Times of Crisis: Hope for a Wounded World from June 20-23. All sessions from the conference are available as recordings on the CPN YouTube channel. This includes a special message from Archbishop Gabriele Caccia, Permanent Observer of the Holy See Mission to the UN; a keynote address from Cardinal Charles Bo of Yangon, Myanmar; a plenary roundtable on the ethics of war and peace led by Boston College's Lisa Sowle Cahill; and a plenary panel on climate, development, and peace, which included Sr. Alessandra Smerilli, secretary of the Holy See Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, Erin Lothes, from St. Elizabeth University and the Laudato Si' Movement, and Laurie Johnston, from Emmanuel College.

  • 06/29/2022 12:08 PM | Ma Christina A Astorga

    OVERTURNING ROE VS. WADE

    The overturning of Roe vs. Wade does not stop abortion or even reduce it, if that was the purpose of the conservative members of the Supreme Court. It was a draconian measure, part of the radical agenda of the right conservative, which only created chaos and deepened social fissures. Abortion is a social problem, and unless its social roots are addressed, draconian measures only instill fear and cause violence, but it does not solve the problem.

    Any extreme position regarding abortion results in extreme consequences. By criminalizing abortion, the government overextends itself by intruding into deeply personal moral choices of women as free and autonomous human beings. Criminalizing abortion removes the right of women to privacy as instituted in the Constitution. They can now be charged of felony when they take recourse in abortion.  It would only make abortion more dangerous, for criminalizing abortion would not stop women from seeking abortion, but seeking it now without the protection of the law. They would be easy targets of unscrupulous abortions under the cloak of the night.

    What is needed are more social amelioration programs that help reduce abortion, by providing women more access to child care, work benefits, employment opportunities, educational benefits. Adoption should be made a more attractive option, by facilitating the adoption process, and providing all the necessary assistance for women to bring their pregnancy to full term, and to ensure the care for their child until he or she is adopted. The goal is to protect the life of the fetus as well as to support women. When women are supported, fetal life is also protected.  When women are left to their devices, as their male partners take flight, or as social institutions neglect them, they are forced to take final recourse in abortion. Opponents of abortion sometimes talk as though the woman is out to “get” the fetus, hell-bent to kill the life in her womb. Only in extreme situations, at the steepest personal and familial cost, do most women opt for abortion as the lesser of two evils.  

    John Paul II views abortion as an instance of the domination of the weak by the strong. This, however, is true in a double sense.  Vulnerable life in the womb is attacked, but women are also victims of structural injustice. John Paul II recognizes the fact that some women as acting under duress and as lacking other options. Supporting the lives of the unborn is a special duty of parents, but they require structures of support in order to do that.  Addressing the social roots of abortion is also addressing a sexual culture that is promiscuous and irresponsible, where abortion is resorted to as an easy and ordinary means, and a patriarchal culture where abortion, as Stanley Hauerwas puts it, is the “coercive method men use to free themselves from responsibility to women.”

    Jolting the legal system, the overturning of Roe vs. Wade has created problems that would have long-term social consequences. A middle position should have been the re-examination of  Roe vs. Wade, so that it does not degenerate into abortion on demand, but allows abortion with restrictions and exceptions which are reasonable, ethical, and legal.

    Christina A. Astorga


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