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Celebrating and lifting up Mary’s true role as Apostle of the Apostles is one of the most important things we can do for our Church and world.

This year, recognizing that horrific violence of every kind rages around us, we turn our focus particularly to epidemic of gun violence. How does Mary Magdalene’s story instruct and inspire us today as we seek to bring about change?

Through this prayer service, we will intentionally place ourselves with Mary at the foot of the cross as she witnesses Jesus’ violent death and remember those who have been killed in incidents of gun violence. We then place ourselves with Mary in the uncertain time between Crucifixion and Resurrection as we hear Kimberly Rubio and X. González speak to us through their grief and trauma in the immediate aftermath of their own experiences of gun violence. Finally, we join Mary as she sets out to the tomb on that first Easter morning to discover the Risen One and consider how Christ is calling us to join Mary as bearers of the Good News in a world so desperate for it today.

Additional resources are also available. 

Wednesday, July 13, 2022 at 7pm EDT

Virtual Art Tour

FutureChurch is pleased to welcome back Dr. Christine Axen, Ph.D. for our third Mary Magdalene Virtual Art Tour! This year, Dr. Axen’s presentation will compare and contrast artistic depictions of Mary Magdalene in the Western and Eastern Church.

The misidentification of Mary as reformed public sinner achieved official standing in a homily delivered by Pope Gregory I (540-604). Henceforth, Mary of Magdala became known in the west, not as the strong woman leader who accompanied Jesus through a tortuous death, first witnessed his Resurrection, and proclaimed the Risen Savior to the early church, but as a wanton woman in need of repentance and a life of hidden (and hopefully silent) penitence. The Eastern church, however, never identified her as a prostitute, and honored her throughout history as “the Apostle to the Apostles.” Dr. Axen’s virtual tour of the art will explore how these disparate traditions impacted artistic depictions of St. Mary Magdalene.

July 21, 2022 at 8pm EDT

Virtual Liturgy

Join FutureChurch for our Annual Feast of St. Mary Magdalene Celebration, which will once again be hosted online for all to join!

This year, we will reflect on and pray with Mary Magdalene’s faithful witness and powerful presence at the cross as we reckon with the senseless violence – and particularly gun violence – that we ourselves witness in our communities each day. We are honored to welcome guest preacher, Dr. Kimberly Lymore, D.Min.

June 28, 2022 at 12:00 Noon EDT

TalkUP Tuesday: Dark Money in the Catholic Church with Brian Fraga of the National Catholic Reporter

National Catholic Reporter’s Brian Fraga will join us to speak on the web of “dark money” flowing from conservative and right wing sources to Catholic organizations in the United States. Several of these same donors have also funneled money to far-right groups that the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League have described as white nationalist organizations. Some of those recipients worked to spread false information about election fraud and were involved in planning demonstrations that preceded the Jan. 6, 2021, assault at the United States Capitol.

Brian Fraga is a staff reporter at National Catholic Reporter. He covers news pertaining to the Catholic Church in the United States. He was previously a contributing editor at Our Sunday Visitor and has written for a variety of Catholic publications over the last decade. Brian was also a reporter for daily newspapers in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York and New Mexico. He lives in Fall River, Massachusetts, with his wife Catherine and their daughter Hope.

July 19, 2022 at 12noon EDT

TalkUP Tuesday: The Crisis of Catholic Communication with David Gibson

David Gibson, longtime Catholic journalist and currently director of the Center on Religion and Culture at Fordham University, discusses his recent National Catholic Reporter article on the decision by the USCCB to shutter Catholic News Service and what it says about their financial priorities, their pastoral priorities, and the entire project of evangelization and communications.

David Gibson was appointed the director of the Center on Religion and Culture at Fordham in July 2017, coming to New York’s Jesuit university after a long career as an award-winning religion journalist, author and filmmaker. He’s also a convert to Catholicism, and came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, working at the English Program at Vatican Radio in Rome in the late 1980s. He returned to the United States in 1990 and worked for newspapers in the New York area and has written for a variety of magazines and periodicals. He is the author of two books on Catholicism: The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism, and The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World. Before coming to Fordham, Gibson worked for six years as a national reporter at Religion News Service specializing in coverage of the Vatican and the Catholic Church. Gibson is a frequent media commentator and op-ed writer on topics related to the Catholic Church and religion in America.

August 2 , 2022 at 8pm EDT

Women Erased: Women in Second Temple Judaism with Prof. Amy Jill Levine

The popular perception that Jesus was a first-century feminist amid a Judaism that made the Taliban look progressive is compelling for many women who seek from Jesus a message of liberation from patriarchy. This perception is also both historically inaccurate and theologically toxic. How can better historical work help us reconstruct the lives of first-century Jewish women, and how can this reconstruction in turn provide good news to women today?

Amy Jill Levine is Rabbi Stanley M. Kessler Distinguished Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Hartford International University of Religion and Peace and University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies Emerita, Mary Jane Werthan Professor of Jewish Studies Emerita, and Professor of New Testament Studies Emerita at Vanderbilt. Her publications include The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus, Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi; six children’s books (with Sandy Sasso); The Gospel of Luke (with Ben Witherington III, the first biblical commentary by a Jew and an Evangelical); The Jewish Annotated New Testament (co-edited with Marc Brettler), The Bible With and Without Jesus: How Jews and Christians Read the Same Stories Differently (with Marc Brettler), The Pharisees (co-edited with Joseph Sievers), and thirteen edited volumes of the Feminist Companions to the New Testament and Early Christian Literature. Along with Introduction to the Old Testament for the Teaching Company, her study guides include Sermon on the Mount: A Beginner’s Guide to the Kingdom of Heaven; Light of the World: A Beginner’s Guide to Advent, The Difficult Words of Jesus: A Beginner’s Guide to His Most Perplexing Teachings, and Witness at the Cross: A Beginner’s Guide to Holy Week. The first Jew to teach New Testament at Rome’s Pontifical Biblical Institute, and an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, AJ describes herself as an unorthodox member of an Orthodox synagogue and a Yankee Jewish feminist who seeks to correct anti-Jewish, sexist, and other harmful interpretations of the Bible.

August 9, 16, 23, 30 at 7pm EDT

Join us for our 4-part book study! "Subversive Habits: Black Catholic Nuns in the Long African American Freedom Struggle"

Join us as we take a deep dive into Dr. Shannen Dee Williams' groundbreaking research, “Subversive Habits: Black Catholic Nuns in the Long African American Freedom Struggle.” We will explore the lives, experiences, struggles, and advances Black Catholic women religious made in the long struggle for freedom. This series will include prayer, study, group discussions, and guest speakers. Please join us for an exciting exploration of our Catholic history and the women who changed the course of our faith.