Bilgrimage: Bishop Robert McElroy

Thursday, October 17, 2013

Bishop Robert McElroy, "A Church for the Poor": Reframing the Catholic Moral Conversation in Light of Pope Francis's Insistence on Primacy of the Poor

At America Magazine, Bishop Robert W. McElroy of San Francisco offers an essay entitled "A Church for the Poor." Bishop McElroy views Pope Francis's stress on the primacy of the poor in Catholic thinking and the Catholic practice of faith as a profound challenge to the way in which many Americans, including American Catholics, think about political issues. Francis's call to orient our thinking about matters of faith and our practice of faith around the poor is an "invitation to cultural conversion."

Selected Publications

Religion and Public Life in the Southern Crossroads Region: The Showdown States. Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira, 2004. Ed. by William D. Lindsey and Mark Silk.

Shailer Mathews’ Lives of Jesus: The Search for a Theological Foundation for the Social Gospel. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997.

Singing in a Strange Land: Praying and Acting with the Poor. Kansas City: Sheed & Ward, 1991.

“On Being Church in the New Millennium: The Challenge and Gift of Gay Believers,” Theology and Sexuality 16 (2002), 96-104.

“AIDS, Homosexuality, and the Churches in America Today,” Bulletin for Contextual Theology in Southern Africa and Africa 7,1 (2000), 45-48.

“The AIDS Crisis and the Church: A Time to Heal.” In Christian Perspectives on Sexuality and Gender, ed. Adrian Thatcher and Elizabeth Stuart. London: Eerdmans and Gracewing, 1996. Pp. 347-66.