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Stories We Tell: Latinx Narratives and the Future of Catholicism

Cover illustration for the book Cuéntame showing a woman wearing red carrying something overhead and a woman wearing yellow. Both are walking down a street with white buildings and tan roofs. The sky is blue.

ON-DEMAND WEBINAR
Stories We Tell: Latinx Narratives and the Future of Catholicism
with Natalia Imperatori-Lee, PhD

Demographics indicate that the future of the Catholic Church will primarily be found in the global South. For US Catholics, deeper engagement with Catholicism from Latin America and its Latinx communities in the United States can open up previously underexplored ecclesial frontiers. This webinar will look at how Latinx narrative and storytelling historically, demographically, and artistically enriches the story of American Catholicism.

Natalia Imperatori-Lee, PhD, is Professor and chair of the department of Religious Studies at Manhattan College in the Bronx, NY. She is the author of Women and the Church: From Devil’s Gateway to Discipleship (Paulist Press, 2024), and of Cuéntame: Narrative in the Ecclesial Present (Orbis Books, 2018). Her work focuses on the intersection of Latinx theologies, feminist theologies, and Catholic ecclesiology. She has published in Theological Studies and The Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion. A native of Miami, Florida, Imperatori-Lee has served on the Board of Directors of the Catholic Theological Society of America and the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians of the US. She is a frequent commentator in media on matters pertaining to the church, women, LGBTQ+ issues, and more. At Manhattan College, Dr. Imperatori-Lee teaches courses on contemporary Catholicism, including Vatican II, as well as courses like Sexuality and the Sacred and Women in Western Religion.

Dr. Imperatori-Lee speaks regularly at parishes, universities, and in other venues about feminism, faith, and the Latinx communities in the United States. Her writing has appeared in Commonweal and America magazines, and has appeared as a guest expert on Pope Francis on CNN and MSNBC.  She lives in the Bronx with her spouse and children.

illustration photo credit: Orbis Book

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Prayer for me, then, has been an entering into my own heart and experience and finding its meaning in the experience of Jesus and of his Mother who is the perfect Christian and faith-filled believer.

Margaret Brennan, IHM, in New Catholic World (Jan/Feb 1977, p. 21)

Prayer is … the challenge to find Jesus, to respond to him, to rejoice in his goodness, and mercy, and tender love … in the encounters of every day and in the challenging, often ambiguous signs of our times.

Margaret Brennan, IHM, in New Catholic World (Jan/Feb 1977, p. 21)

Spirituality is the capacity to live deeply in the concrete, creative order of things even as we stretch through and beyond them.

Margaret Brennan, IHM, in Compass: A Jesuit Journal (Sept/Oct 1994, p. 19)

Spirituality is what our faith looks like in everyday life. Spirituality is about getting to the bottom of our restlessness. It is here that God comes. It is here where God is.

Margaret Brennan, IHM (Presentation at the Summer Pastoral Theological Institute at St. John Center for Youth and Family in Plymouth, Mich., on Aug. 12, 1999)

I grew into a great love of the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ and of the liturgy, through which the life of the Church is most deeply expressed.

Margaret Brennan, IHM, in What Was There For Me Once: A Memoir (2009, p. 45)

The experience of God and ways of knowing the holy are the same as our mode of knowing all other things. And that mode is sensuality.

Margaret Brennan, IHM, in Compass: A Jesuit Journal (Sept/Oct 1994, p. 18)

When both our light and our darkness are integrated then our inner and outer lives are integrated. Losing ourselves and then finding ourselves again is the pattern of our journey through life.

Margaret Brennan, IHM, at St. Paul’s Retreat Center (May 11, 2009)

You never come to the bottom, do you? How do you come to the bottom of coming to know God? God is so big that you just come to know different things about God all the time. As you learn more about the world you learn more about God.

Margaret Brennan, IHM, in a voice recording on September 15, 2015

To resist evil and violence both within and outside us is to acknowledge ourselves as purposeful agents of salvation, and of responsibility, to ourselves and others, capable of moral discernment, courage, creativity and solidarity.

Margaret Brennan, IHM, in What Was There For Me Once: A Memoir (2009, p. 79)

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