Four Wednesdays in February at 7pm EST

Fertile Ground: Vatican II, the Synod, and the Future of the Church

February 2, 2022 at 7pm EST
February 9, 2022 at 7pm EST
February 16, 2022 at 7pm EST
February 23, 2022 at 7pm EST

Join FutureChurch and Sr. Maureen Sullivan, OP for this four-part series exploring Vatican II, the Synod, and the Future of the Catholic Church.  

Sr. Maureen joins us again for another engaging four-week series exploring Vatican II documents as the foundation for the 2023 Synod. Without doubt, the upcoming Synod is the most important gathering in the recent history of the church and the most promising since the 1962 -1965 Second Vatican Council.

Vatican II produced a charter for the Church to move from the rigid, hierarchical model espoused by Pius IX at Vatican I (1869-70) to the collegial, "communio" model that emerged under John XXIII. Pope Francis has invested enormous energy in moving the church back on course with his emphasis on Vatican II. The 2023 Synod is the culmination of his efforts offering the promise of an authentically synodal church where women, and men, both lay and ordained, led by the Spirit, guide and shape the direction of the church.

Participants will explore a number of Vatican II documents and come to understand how Vatican II serves as the foundation for the upcoming 2023 Synod on Communion, Participation, and Mission.

As we get more familiar with the documents of Second Vatican Council and engage in the synod process, we make the Vatican II Church a greater reality today.

February 15, 2022 at 8pm ET

Women Witnesses for Racial Justice Series Presentation: Professor Diane Batts Morrow on "Black Catholic Women Religious: Agency and Obstacles"

Professor Diane Batts Morrow will offer a presentation on the accomplishments and trials of Black Women Religious in honor of Black History Month. She has written extensively about the Oblate Sisters who challenged prevailing social, political, and cultural attitudes.

While white society viewed women of color as lacking in moral standing, their standing as religious -- their vows of celibacy as an alternative to the skewed and corrupted views of black women's sexuality; their communal sense of spritual fervor; and their hard won agency and power proved both liberating and empowering. The Oblate sisters defied the inferior social status white society ascribed to them and the antagonism of the Catholic Church toward their emerging community. They successfully persevered in dedicating themselves to spiritual practice in the Roman Catholic tradition and their mission to educate black children during the era of slavery.

Join us for this informative and liberating presentation.

Biography: Diane Batts Morrow is Associate Professor Emerita of History and African American Studies at the University of Georgia. She taught courses which focused on the African American experience in United States history. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Swarthmore College with a B. A. in History, earned her M.S. in Social Science Education from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and her Ph.D. in History from the University of Georgia. Her first book, Persons of Color and Religious at the Same Time: The Oblate Sisters of Providence, 1828-1860, which the University of North Carolina Press published in 2002, won that year’s Letitia Woods Brown Memorial Book Prize from the Association of Black Women Historians. In 2004 the Conference on the History of Women Religious honored this work with its Distinguished Book Award. Morrow is currently working on a second volume which continues the story of this first Roman Catholic black sisterhood—which celebrated its 190th anniversary in 2019—into the middle of the twentieth century.