A New Agenda for Catholic Theology and Ministry: Perspectives from Queer Theologians of Color

“"Towards Justice, Towards the Survival of the Catholicity of Our Church: All of Our Identities or None of Them." ”

Team Members/Contributors

Miguel Humberto Díaz Loyola University Chicago Contact Me
Craig A Ford, Jr. Saint Norbert College Contact Me
Bryan Massingale Fordham University Contact Me

About this project grant for researchers

This project challenges current Catholic theological scholarship in gender and sexuality and opens new avenues to reflect on these human experiences from the perspective of race and ethnicity. While Catholic theology and the Church in the United States have both benefited from contributions made by queer theologians, there is an urgent need to explore the interlocking layers of oppression and life-threatening experiences that queer persons of color face, especially with respect to issues of racism, hetero/sexism, and immigration status.

This project opens new venues of scholarship and carries profound implications for those engaged in ministry, in particular those ministering among queer persons of color. Queer persons of color within the Catholic Church must contend with multiple layers of invisibility in theological reflection and pastoral ministry. Given the life and death consequences of interlocking oppressions based on sexuality and racial/ethnic identity, Church leaders and the faithful need to listen to, engage in conversation with, and receive the valuable contributions that come from openly queer Catholic scholars and pastoral leaders of color. This critical conversation over issues of sexuality by queer persons of color represents the first such project in the Catholic Church in the Americas. The scholars and pastoral agents who will come together at Loyola University Chicago will work en conjunto, that is, will engage one another through communal and critical conversations on the subject of human sexuality, gender- and sex-based oppression. These conversations will enrich the arguments of each of the participants and lead publishing a seminal collaborative volume that engages history, systematic theology, ethics, ministry, and practical theology. The audience for this volume will include scholars, ministers, undergraduate and graduate students, and interested Catholics in the pews open to engage this difficult subject within the Church and society.