LGBTQ Catholic Ministry: Past and Present
Jason Steidl/Paulist Press
Those in the LGBTQ Catholic community often feel like they are on the outside looking in with the Church, and many parishes across the United States have struggled to find ways to connect and share the beauty of our faith with LGBTQ members of the congregation. Author Jason Steidl knows this all too well. Since 2015, he has been involved with the Out at St. Paul program, an LGBTQ outreach ministry at St. Paul the Apostle Church in Manhattan. In LGBTQ Catholic Ministry, Steidl explores some of the Church’s painful history of alienating and mistreating LGBTQ Catholics, but it’s always with an eye to learning from the past in order to do a better job in the present and future. Father James Martin, SJ, whose book Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community Can Enter into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion, and Sensitivity was a major inspiration for Steidl, authors the foreword.
The Humility of God: A Franciscan Perspective
Ilia Delio, OSF/Franciscan Media
This new edition of Sister Ilia Delio’s 2004 classic could not have come at a better time. As ugly political rhetoric and hubris run rampant during an increasingly fraught election year, it’s all the more needed to reacquaint ourselves with higher things. As Sister Ilia expresses in the preface to the new edition: “The world is not broken and decrepit; the world is the place of God’s radical becoming in love. Francis of Assisi grasped the profound import of this truth and set his mind and heart on one thing only, the love of God.”
By meditating on the incredible humility of God becoming human, this Franciscan author reminds us that, in order to imitate Christ, we must live humbly ourselves, in line with the spiritual way of the Poor Man of Assisi.
Citizens Yet Strangers: Living Authentically Catholic In a Divided America
Kenneth Craycraft/Our Sunday Visitor
No matter where you find yourself on the political spectrum, it’s nearly impossible to ignore how deeply fractured we’ve become as a people. Instead of avoiding or sugarcoating this reality, author, attorney, and theologian Kenneth Craycraft takes on the subject of bitter division in our society head-on. Although it skews a bit academic at times, Citizens Yet Strangers is a carefully presented, erudite examination of how to (re)integrate Catholic moral language into political dialogue, so as to transcend partisan politics and regain the crucial spiritual common ground we share as people of faith—and informed citizens.
