ABOUT THE EVENT

“Moving Along the Arc: Women and Men Religious as Agents of Reconciliation and Transformative Action Towards a More Racially Just Church and World”

Together with The National Black Sisters’ Conference (NBSC), the Center for the Study of Consecrated Life (CSCL) at CTU continues the conversation about the role of consecrated religious women and men play in dismantling racial injustice through the current the “Moving Along the Arch” project.

The original sin of racism in the United States is surging and those in consecrated life have a critical role to play in systemic healing through their own growth in becoming more strongly promoters of justice, opposing racism, and through enabling others to do so through their ministries, and through programs dedicated to reparations.

The center is inviting you to their April 18th and 19th 2024 symposium discussing issues with racism racial/ethnic identity, social justice and consecrated religious life.

This symposium will be of interest to social justice scholars and academics, religious and interfaith leaders, social activists and advocates, theologians, and community organizers who have made significant contributions to issues of racial justice, reconciliation, and transformative action within the context of the church and the broader world.

Our keynote presentation from Fr. Bryan Massingale, STD of Fordham University.

Symposium Schedule for Thursday April 18 and Friday April 19, 2024

Thursday April 18, 2024

Lunch – Atrium

Friday April 19, 2024

Reverend Maurice J. Nutt, C.Ss.R., D.Min., A 1989 (M.Div.) graduate of Catholic Theological Union, Redemptorist Father Maurice J. Nutt holds a doctorate degree in preaching from Aquinas Institute of Theology. He completed the executive leadership program at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He served as pastor in parishes in St. Louis and Memphis. He is a noted Catholic preacher. Father Maurice is a former director of the Institute for Black Catholic Studies at Xavier University of Louisiana, and a past convener of the Black Catholic Theological Symposium. He is an adjunct professor of preaching at Aquinas Institute of Theology. In 2022 he was inducted in the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Board of Preachers at Morehouse College in Atlanta. Father Nutt is a member of the Redemptorists’ Denver Province Extraordinary Provincial Council and serves as a consultant of the cause for canonization of Sister Thea Bowman, FSPA, for the Diocese of Jackson. His books include Thea Bowman: Faithful and Free, Down Deep in My Soul: An African American Catholic Theology of Preaching and Preaching Racial Justice. Father Dr. Nutt writes, and lectures in the areas of homiletics, Black spirituality and culture, pastoral theology, evangelization, and the intersection of ecclesiology and social justice.

Sister Limétèze Pierre-Gilles, SSND. I was born and raised in Haiti where I graduated from secondary school and began to attend law school before moving to the United States to join my family in Florida. I attended Palm Beach Community College (now Palm Beach State College); Notre Dame of Maryland University, and Loyola University Chicago. I graduated with a BA in Political Science and Religious Studies; MSW and MA in Women Studies and Gender Studies.

I entered the School Sisters of Notre Dame in 2007. I made First Profession of Vows in 2010 and Perpetual Profession of vows in 2016.

I now minister with Beyond Borders, a nonprofit organization that is working in Haiti, hand in hand with the Haitian people to build movements to end the practice of restavek, provide accessible and quality primary education for children, prevent violence against women and girls by balancing power between men and women boys and girls, and support some families on Lagonav Island, Haiti to overcome extreme poverty.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Bryan N. Massingale is a priest of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. He received his doctorate in moral theology (S.T.D.) from the Academia Alphonsianum (Rome). He specializes in social ethics and teaches courses on Catholic Social Thought, African American religious ethics, sexual ethics, and racial justice. His professional passion is advancing a Black approach to Catholic theological ethics. His approach to social ethics focuses upon the impact of religious faith as both an instrument of social injustice and a catalyst for social transformation. He is Professor of Theological and Social Ethics at Fordham University. There he holds the James and Nancy Buckman Chair in Applied Christian Ethics and is the Senior Fellow at Fordham’s Center for Ethics Education. Prior to his position at Fordham, he was Professor of Theology at Marquette University for 12 years.