"Sharing Our Lives as Theology, Part 4": A Theological Video Conversation Produced by Rachel Fitzgerald and Mark Shumway

It's my privilege to share with you again today a video conversation between Brazilian theologian Ivone Gebara, educator and spiritual director Marlene DeNardo, Rachel Fitzgerald and Mark Shumway, the husband-and-wife team who organized this conversation and produced the video. and me. Rachel is a psychotherapist with a background of teaching spirituality, including at the Latin American School of Spirituality and Ethics, and Mark is a psychologist and mental health counselor who teaches in a variety of culturally diverse contexts. Mark's son Christopher Shumway was the masterful technological guru behind the scenes of this video — a very important part of the production process.

Sharing Our Life as Theology: Another Videotaped Theological Conversation with Ivone Gebara, About Diarmaid MaCulloch's Silence, Christian Amnesia, and Gospel Mandate for Inclusivity

I've previously shared with you two videotaped conversations that I had the honor of having in the past year with the distinguished Brazilian theologian Ivone Gebara (here and here). As I noted when I shared these videos, Mark Shumway and Rachel Fitzgerald Shumway, who maintain the evolving deep forms blog, organized and videotaped these conversations (with expert technical assistance from Mark's son Chris Shumway and Rachel and Ivone's friend Marlene Denardo, who speaks Portuguese and helped facilitate the conversation when Ivone and I needed her wonderful linguistic skills).

Ivone Gebara and Krzysztof Charamsa on Amoris Laetitia: "Ideological Propaganda of the 'Joy' of Love Which Is Heterosexual Only, and Which Insensitively Excludes All Others, Who Should Not Exist"

Two more very valuable pieces of commentary about the papal exhortation on the family Amoris Laetitia that I'd like to recommend to you this morning:

Katha Pollitt on Laudato Si': "If Pope Francis Really Wanted to Fight Climate Change, He'd Be a Feminist"

And more outstanding commentary today — this by Katha Pollitt at The Nation noting that Pope Francis's considerable blind spot regarding women's rights significantly diminishes the power of his encyclical Laudato Si' to address the world's ecological crisis effectively:

"Sharing Our Lives as Theology 2": Another Videotaped Conversation Between Ivone Gebara and Me, on the Papal Encylical Laudato Si'

At Easter time this year, I shared with all of you a video that came to us as an Easter gift from two amazing readers of Bilgrimage, Rachel Fitzgerald and Mark Shumway. As I noted when I shared this video, Rachel and Mark maintain the evolvingdeepforms blog to which this blog links.  

An Easter Gift to Me, and Now to You: A Theological Conversation Between Ivone Gebara and Me, "Sharing Our Life as Theology"

Catholic Synod on the Family: Theologians Talking about Women, Democracy and Human Rights, Catholic Families — and Jesus

As the Catholic synod on the family nears, I'm spotting more and more commentary focusing on the distance (in the view of many Catholics) between the rhetoric of church leaders about pastoral issues, and the realtiy lived by those church leaders as they go about their pastoral work. There is a well-articulated fear in many quarters that the synod will be much more about rhetoric than about reality, that it will, essentially, change nothing, especially for those on whom the church's teaching and policies inflict serious pain.

Rebecca Solnit on Struggle to Name the Significance of Isla Vista Shootings as "Watershed Moment in the History of Feminism"

In yesterday's New York Times, Charles Blow continues the post-Isla Vista drumbeat of insistence that men, all men, need to face the fact that we're at the root of the problem of "female objectification and discrimination and violence against women." Contra those who want to minimize said problem, Blow writes flatly:

Former President Carter on Women, Religion, Violence, and Power: An Interview with Sister Maureen Fiedler

For Interfaith Voices, Sister Maureen Fiedler interviews President Jimmy Carter about his new book A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence and Power. The book looks at the influence of religion (at a global level) on the lives of women and girls — as either an oppressive or a liberating force. What follows are my transcripts from and observations about the audio version of the interview to which the link above points.

Footnote to Brendan Eich Discussion: Yes, It Is about Gender, Race, and Sexual Orientation

"In discourse and analysis," Catholic feminist theologian Ivone Gebara says (citing French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu) "the male vision of the world is presented as evidence and functions as an ideology justifying what exists" (Out of the Depths: Women’s Experience of Evil and Salvation, trans. and intro. Ann Patrick Ware [Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002], p. 68). And then she goes on to say, in a passage I shared with you last month,

Feminist Theologians on the Bible and Slavery and Christian Theology and Skin Color: Applications to Debate about Gay Marriage

Two interlocking quotations from feminist theologians I've been reading lately--Delores S. Williams and Ivone Gebara:

Ivone Gebara on the Violence of the World's Main Religions Against Women, and Extension of This Violence to "All Kinds of People"

In my posting several days ago, I cited Ivone Gebara's Out of the Depths: Women’s Experience of Evil and Salvation, trans. and intro. Ann Patrick Ware (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002), on the ways in which various male-dominated religious traditions reduce women to silence, make them voiceless, deprive them of any means of expressing their spiritual insights in language that makes sense to them as women. Gebara's analysis of this reduction of women to silence goes further: she emphatically depicts these effects of patriarchal culture and religion as a form of violence against women.

Placing Pope Francis's Remarks about a Theology of Women Against the Backdrop of Ivone Gebara's Real Theology of Women

Sister Ivone Gebara

One of the themes that emerged in Pope Francis's anniversary interview this week was the question of the place of women in the Catholic church. As readers will know, this has been a persistent theme of Francis as pope: we need a theology of women, he said last summer. But to a great extent, what he has said in this vein is echoed in what he suggested in his interview this week: namely, that women's place in the church is to represent the feminine, Marian nature of the church, and not to usurp positions of authority that the tradition has assigned to males.

Males active and dominant. Females passive and receptive--like the Virgin Mary, as the male-dominated tradition likes to imagine her.

Ash Wednesday Meditation: Ivone Gebara on the Communtarian Dimension of the Cross

Today's Ash Wednesday, a day in which some Christian liturgical traditions limn crosses of ash on the foreheads of the faithful, to challenge them to remember that they are dust and will return to dust. Ash Wednesday inaugurates a liturgical season of remembering the cross and resurrection of Jesus, the central symbols on which Christian faith turns.

Angela Bonavoglia's To-Do-List on Women for Pope Francis, with Theological Reflections from Ivone Gebara

At Huffington Post, Angela Bonavoglia has published a very fine open letter to Pope Francis entitled "For Pope Francis: A To-Do List for Women." The letter calls on Francis to stop talking about the role of women in the church, when the subjects that should really be under discussion are justice and equality. As Bonavoglia notes, further talk about where women's "place" is only further underscores assumptions that the male experience and perspective are normative, and women's experiences and perspectives are somehow to be wedged into the normative paradigm established by males.

Brazilian Theologian Ivone Gebara on Pope Francis and "Theology of Women"

Ivone Gebara

In an interview with Instituto Humanitas Unisinos helpfully translated into English by Rebel Girl at her Iglesia Descalza site, Brazilian theologian Ivone Gebara reacts to the statements made by Pope Francis about women's role in the Catholic church following the recent World Youth Day events in Brazil:

Ivone Gebara on the Papal Election: "Official Coverage" and Stoning Dissonant Voices

Sister Ivone Gebara

I'm really happy to discover today that National Catholic Reporter has published Brazilian theologian Ivone Gebara's meditation on the papal election process, the new pope, and the geopolitics of secrecy. I had read a précis of the article somewhere else a few days ago, and thought it was powerful. It helps me keep any hope I can muster with the new papacy grounded . . . in the real world, beyond the world of carefully crafted images and media hype that so many of my fellow Americans eat up with such naive, uncritical alacrity, as if we ourselves, we Americans, have become people of the easy image and not of hard thought and careful critical dialogue.

Sunday Commentary on State of Catholic Church As Papal Election Nears

Habemus papam! Well, at least, according to "Saturday Night Live," it appears we do.

The Post-Benedict Catholic Moment: What Now?--A Selection of Commentary

I may be offering you another slice of rich fruitcake and cloying cup of eggnog the day after Christmas--when what your sated body rightly craves is a modest, vinegary salad and tonic glass of bitters--but how can I possibly ignore all the goodies you readers have been sending my way, regarding the transition in the papacy? There they are, to be read, and shared. And so here's a selection of statements about the "what-next" steps for the Catholic church, many of these from articles recommended by Bilgrimage readers in the last day or so:

Droppings from the Catholic Birdcage: "Ratzinger's Legacy?" "Over 100 Theologians . . . Silenced, Admonished and Disciplined"

In response to an article by John Allen at National Catholic Reporter about the legacy Pope Benedict XVI leaves behind, Vacy writes,*