God's Works Revealed

Sam Albano shares his upcoming book God's Works Revealed: Spirituality, Theology, and Social Justice for Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Catholics. (Paulist Press, 2022) God’s Works Revealed proposes a compelling, challenging, and joyful vision for living as a lesbian, gay, or bisexual Catholic. This work affirms that LGB Catholics can discover in our very sexuality the intentional and divinely-gifted grace to live our baptismal call to holiness and to share in God’s responsibility for this world and its people.

Sam Albano

Sam Albano (he/him) is a writer, educator, and member of the LGBTQI Catholic community. He is a member of DignityUSA and currently serves as its national secretary. In 2015, Sam's writing was published in National Catholic Reporter and Huffington Post. He was chosen to offer the homily at DignityUSA's national conference in 2019. Sam is the author of the upcoming book God's Works Revealed: Spirituality, Theology, and Social Justice for Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Catholics (Paulist Press, 2022).

Transfigured & Transformed: Church Beyond the Binary

We live in a world full of binaries: male and female, Catholic and Protestant, clergy, and laity. While these binaries can sometimes help us in constructing definitions, they can also be limiting. What possibilities open up when we imagine church beyond the strict binaries? How might our efforts to push or cross boundaries create opportunities for greater flourishing, especially for those historically excluded from leadership, preaching, and ordained ministry?

"Rompe la tela deste dulce encuentro": Mysticism, Human Persons, and God's Queer Love

My book Queer God de Amor is about the mystery of God and the relationship between divine and human persons. This is the third book in Orbis' new series, Disruptive Cartographers: Doing Theology Latinamente. The book revisits central themes in trinitarian theology by turning to the sixteenth-century teaching of Juan de la Cruz on mystical union with God and the analogue of sexual relationship that he uses to describe this union.

Miguel H. Díaz

Miguel H. Díaz is the John Courtney Murray, S.J. University Chair in Public Service at Loyola University Chicago. Dr. Díaz served under President Barack Obama as the 9th U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See. He is co-editor of the new Orbis series, Disruptive Cartographers: Doing Theology Latinamente. The series opened in 2021 with his edited volume titled The Word Became Culture. He is also the author of the third book in this series, Queer God de Amor. As a public theologian, Prof. Diaz regularly engages print, radio, and television media.

Melissa Pagán

Dr. Melissa Pagán is Assistant Professor and Director of Graduate Religious Studies at Mount Saint Mary’s University. Dr. Pagán is a lay Catholic decolonial feminist ethicist. She holds a PhD in Religion, Ethics, and Society from Emory University. Her areas of research include analyses of the logics of global coloniality in the increasing militarization of both physical and ideological borders between persons and issues of race, gender, and sexuality in Catholic Social Thought.

Every Life Cherished and Celebrated: Mercy’s Response to a Call

Members of Dignity are more aware than anyone of the perils of being gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, or “queer,” and serving as a minister or colleague in a Catholic institution today. Of course, this is especially true if the person is married to someone of the same sex, or otherwise outwardly identifiable. Like many parishes, and like many religious orders or congregations, the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas have experienced pressure from bishops and/or other “concerned” members of the Catholic community, that people so identified be fired. Using Canon law and Catholic Church “teaching” and backed by a threat of removal of official Catholic identification, leaders of these institutions have made decisions contrary to the espoused values of the Sisters of Mercy.

Stories of LGBTQ+ Parenting

This session features a conversation between two local LGBTQ+ parents who are active in LGBTQ+ community in San Diego and beyond. They will discuss the impact of their upbringings and experiences in shaping the people they are today; the different paths they took to create their families; their personal experiences with transgender family members; the similarities and differences from their time growing up LGBTQ+ to the striking generational shifts being experienced by their children; and their activities as volunteers in the LGBTQ+ community.

Reading Teresa of Avila: Women's Friendships, Sappho, Melancholic Nuns, and other Puzzles

Saint Teresa of Avila (1515-1582), the first woman Doctor of the Catholic Church and reformer of the Carmelite Order, wrote extensively about her life and her mystical experiences. She also wrote the Constitutions of the Discalced Carmelites, described her experiences founding convents, and kept an active correspondence with women and men, most of which has been preserved. In her autobiography she describes a period in her adolescence in which she lived in sin because of her relationship with a female cousin and another girl.

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