Footnote to My Eulogy of Carmel McEnroy: "As so Many Others Have Experienced in This Life, Her Complete Redemption Had to Wait Till the Next Life"

Mercy Sister, Carmel McEnroy, author who captured women's role in #VaticanII, dies https://t.co/UxKj64GdVU via @ncronline @SistersofMercy @GerardRMoloney @FlanneryTony @MiriamTDuignan @vofwomen

— Sarah R Mac Donald (@SarahRMacDonald) December 3, 2019

A response David Jackson made to my remembrance of my graduate school colleague Sister Carmel McEnroy, RSM, prompts me to add a footnote to that posting. David writes,

Remembering Carmel McEnroy, RSM, a Distinguished Theologian Whose Career Was Cut Short by St. Meinrad Theology School

Mercy Sister, Carmel McEnroy, author who captured women's role in #VaticanII, dies https://t.co/UxKj64GdVU via @ncronline @SistersofMercy @GerardRMoloney @FlanneryTony @MiriamTDuignan @vofwomen

— Sarah R Mac Donald (@SarahRMacDonald) December 3, 2019

I've learned today from the tweet of Sarah R. MacDonald above  that my graduate school classmate Carmel McEnroy has left us. Carmel was a few years ahead of me in the graduate theology program at University of St. Michael's College of the Toronto School of Theology. I'm saddened to hear of her death. Carmel was a person of great integrity, who suffered much when St. Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology School fired her, a tenured professor, after she signed a statement calling for keeping discussion of women's ordination open.

Frédéric Martel's In the Closet of the Vatican: Concluding Remarks About Why This Book Matters — The Extensive Damage Done by a System "Perverted Since the Outset"

I've now finished reading Frédéric Martel's In the Closet of the Vatican, and want to share some concluding thoughts about the book. Two interrelated points strike me as I think about the book as a whole. The first is that the book's importance lies in how it moves what has been far too much a parochial Catholic conversation into the public sphere. The second, and related, insight is that this move is entirely necessary if the Catholic church wishes to regain any measure of moral credibility or pastoral or theological relevance following the abuse revelations.

The Bridge-Building Metaphor, the LGBTQ Community, and the Catholic Church: You Want to Build a Bridge to THAT?!

As a metaphor, the image of building bridges from the LGBTQ community to the Catholic church and vice versa does not work for me. A primary reason it does not work: it's not clear to me what is "over there," on the church side of the bridge. 1)

— William D. Lindsey (@wdlindsy) February 20, 2018

Kevin Ahern on the Failure of American Catholic Theologians to Defend Father James Martin: "A Crisis or Perhaps Even a Failure in Our Public Theology"

A Failure in Public Theology: The Non-Defense of James Martin, SJ by @kevin_ahern https://t.co/XX7Z9kmdRr via @wordpressdotcom

— Katie Grimes (@KatieMGrimes) February 4, 2018

Earlier today, I wrote about the hate being directed against Father James Martin online, and the astonishing silence of most of the intellectual leaders of the U.S. Catholic church — its journalists and academics — about this hate. I pointed you to an article by Frank Bruni in today's New York Times outlining how Father Martin is being relentlessly attacked, and I linked Bruni's account to the discussion of Father Martin that has been underway for several days now at Religion News Service following Jacob Lupfer's report of a lecture of Father Martin's that he attended recently. As I told you yesterday, the discussion of Lupfer's report at RNS has turned into a hate fest that is now all too predictable at religion news sites and religion blogs when LGBTQ lives are being examined.

On Palm Sunday, a Letter I Wrote a Bishop Twenty Years Ago: "Your Eyes Are Fixed More on Power, Privilege, and Façades, Than on the Substance of the Gospel"

I shared excerpts of this letter here almost three years ago to the day, noting that I sent it to the then-bishop of Charlotte, North Carolina, William Curlin, as Steve and I, with my mother (who was declining and suffering from dementia and for whom Steve and I were providing care), left the diocese of Charlotte, because we had no other choice. Our jobs as Catholic theologians had been taken from us without explanation, we had been blacklisted as Catholic theologians, we had no way to make a living and no health-insurance coverage.

Where Have All the Christian Intellectuals Gone? (Does Anyone Remember John Paul's and Ratzinger's Purge of Catholic Theologians?)

It's a thing now among journalists and religion commentators to ask what has happened to the public intellectuals of the churches in the past few decades — as Catholic commentator E.J. Dionne does in this Commonweal essay. Where have they gone? Why are they not with us any longer — the Niebuhrs (or, as Fred Clark points out, the Martin Luther Kings who never get mentioned in this discussion, and isn't that curious, and noteworthy)?

Patricia Miller Asks Important Question: "What Does It Mean for the Church That the Last Three Heads of the CDF Have Been Implicated in Covering up Sexual Abuse?"

Recommended: Patricia Miller's latest essay at Religion Dispatches, in which she continues to note the connections between the brutal attack on theologians regarded as dissidents under the previous two popes, and the cover-up of clerical sexual abuse of minors by the top leaders of the Catholic church. As she notes, the former head of the diocesan lay council in Regensburg has stated that the current head of the Vatican's watchdog agency, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Gerhard Müller, "systematically" covered up clerical sexual abuse cases when he was archbishop of Regensburg. As Patti notes, Pope Benedict's brother Rev. Georg Ratzinger was choirmaster of the Regensburg cathedral boys' choir, about which allegations of abuse of choirboys over many years are now surfacing.

Recommended: Joe Biden on LGBT Rights, Catherine Wallace on Gay Marriage and Anglican Anxiety, Patricia Miller on What Pope Benedict Knew When

God bless Joe Biden (the section I've transcribed from his recent remarks at the World Economic Forum begins at about the 1.55 mark):

Readers Write and I Respond: The Book Project

In what I just posted about Steve's and my religious transition right at present, I told you that I would also pick up the thread of previous discussions of a book I might write about the story of how our careers as Catholic theologians who happen to be gay were destroyed by Catholic pastoral leaders. I appreciate very much the encouragement of a number of you to me to write such a book, and your offers to help me as I do so.

An Entirely Wrong-Headed Proposal for USCCB Funding of Lay Theological Education at America Magazine: My Critical Response

As I've mentioned here in the past, I have given up on reading the Jesuit weekly America, even though I read it faithfully for many years, from my undergraduate days at a Jesuit university where I was taught by an esteemed Jesuit who played a key role in the magazine from its early days, until . . . well, until I gave up on America. Having comments I made on its discussion board, in which I considered myself to be defending gay folks against slander, and thought I was using rational and inoffensive statements to pursue that end, soured me on America. Having these comments deleted without any explanation offered to me soured me on America and its "open" discussions of Catholic issues.

Droppings from the Catholic Birdcage: "He Found Time to Meet Kim But Not Meet with Any One of the Many Outstanding Female Theologians Living in the U.S."

Questions from a Ewe writes, 

As Francis Comes to U.S., I Remember JPII's Visit to My University in 1987 — When the Ceiling Fell

As the current pope comes to the U.S., how can I ever forget the visit of another previous rock-star pope, John Paul II, to the U.S.? When, as he was doing his thing at Xavier University in New Orleans, where I was teaching theology, the ceiling in my office fell down. In just the same way that he and his right-hand man, Cardinal Ratzinger, fell down on one theologian after another, over and over, throughout JPII's long papal reign. As I wrote in 2011, remembering this papal visit:

The SNAP Conference: A Personal Response (on Being Made Human Garbage by Church Leaders)

More on the SNAP conference this past weekend: for me personally, the conference made a big impact in a way that’s not really easy to explain. I suppose the best way to aim at explanation is to say that listening to people who have had no option except to give up on the churches – meeting many such folks in such a concentrated group – has set my heart at ease about the similar movement of my own religious and spiritual life.

The Debate About Welcoming Those Who Are Gay — A Reader Asks: "What Are Catholics Afraid of? And Why"

In your comments about "the ideological warfare and spin-control struggles" that have broken out at the synod on the family over the word "welcome" (the fine phrase about warfare and struggles is Peter Montgomery's, in his valuable overview of this week at the Vatican), several of you (e.g., mgardener) have asked what folks are so afraid of with the word "welcome." What about the clear, unambiguous statement that human beings made gay by God are welcome, for God's sake, in the Catholic church is so threatening to some Catholics?

End-of-Week Commentary on Religious Matters: Religious-Right Gathering, White Evangelicals' Persecution Complex, Banning of Theologian Tina Beattie, "Unchanging"? Church Teaching, WWJD?

As the work week ends, some thought-provoking observations I've gleaned from things I've read in the past several days, all with a religious (and/or a religion-and-politics) focus:

Family Values, Theologians, and Archbishop Nienstedt: A Theological Discussion Pertinent to the Synod on the Family

I just wrote that I'm seeing a strong hunger for authentic dialogue expressed in much commentary in Catholic circles about  the upcoming synod on the family. The hunger for authentic dialogue manifests itself as an impatience with rhetoric that never moves beyond the realm of symbol to effective action. Here's a snapshot of where many American Catholics may be right now, vis-a-vis that hunger for . . . something: for real change in our church and how it does business, for effective action in areas like the abuse crisis, for authentic dialogue that involves talking with and not down to.

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.

Members of Theology Faculty of St. Thomas University, St. Paul: We Need "New Leadership at the Archdiocesan Level, Leadership That Includes Individuals Who Are Neither Perpetrators Nor Enablers of Abuse"

Brian Roewe reports today that five members of the theology faculty of St. Thomas University in St. Paul, Minnesota — Cara Anthony, Corrine Carvalho, Sherry Jordon, Sue Myers and Kimberly Vrudny — have issued a call for "new leadership at the archdiocesan level, leadership that includes individuals who are neither perpetrators nor enablers of abuse." The letter does not name specific persons in its call for new leadership, but obviously addresses the crisis of leadership in the archdiocese under its current archbishop, John Nienstedt.

Matthew Fox on Benedict XVI (in Introduction to Norbert Krapf's Catholic Boy Blues): Suggestions for a Retreat for the Pope Emeritus

I'm doing a lot of reading lately, and it occurs to me to share the fruits of that labor with you by way of snippets from things I'm reading, with occasional commentary on those snippets: the following is from theologian Matthew Fox's introduction to Norbert Krapf's Catholic Boy Blues (Nashville: Greystone, 2014):