Noted Catholic theologian and ethnographer 苏珊·毕格罗·雷诺兹 was presented with the 太阳城网赌平台 神学与事工学院’s 校友 Distinguished Service Award at an event on campus earlier this month. She is the first layperson to be honored with the award since it was established in 2018.
An assistant professor of Catholic studies at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology, 雷诺兹以M的成绩从STM毕业.T.S. in 2013 and 从 the University's Morrissey College of Arts & 具有博士学位的科学.D. in 2018. 她的太阳城官网重点是公共仪式, 文化, and questions of marginality and suffering in ecclesial communities.
她是《太阳城官网》的特约撰稿人 公益 magazine and is a frequent contributor to national conversations on Catholicism and public life in the media, 在国家公共广播电台露面, PBS新闻时间, 美国全国广播公司, 和美国有线电视新闻网.
苏珊·毕格罗·雷诺兹.T.S. '13, Ph.D. 18年交付了Daniel J. 哈林顿,年代.J. 4月13日讲座. (李Pellegrini)
“我们很高兴能向你致敬, 苏珊, as you have embodied the mission of the 神学与事工学院 in your work, 在你的工作中, 也是埃默里大学的神学家,STM院长Michael C. 麦卡锡年代.J. “Your courses and many published works demonstrate your commitment to the intersection of theology and lived Catholic faith, 尤其是在生活的边缘. The good work that you are doing in the classroom, 在打印, and 在你的工作中 will have lasting positive effect in the church and the world.”
Prior to the award presentation, Reynolds delivered this year's Daniel J. 哈林顿,年代.J. Lecture, titled “Basements, Potlucks, and the Orange Line: Listening for God in an Urban Parish.雷诺兹曾是弗朗索瓦和弗朗索瓦的学生. Harrington, the eminent New Testament scholar and lecture’s namesake who died in 2014, and Thomas D. Stegman,年代.J., a former STM dean who died less than a week before the event. She began her talk with words of gratitude for both Jesuits, 以及STM的“教授”社区, 导师, 还有同学“谁”, 她说, deepened and challenged her commitment to do theology and made it into something “intelligible, 负责任的, 和细心的.”
雷诺兹的演讲摘自她的新书， People Get Ready: Ritual, Solidarity, and Lived Ecclesiology in Catholic Roxbury，这本书追溯了圣. Mary of the Angels—a racially and culturally diverse parish on Boston’s social, economic and ecclesial peripheries—constructed rituals of solidarity as a practical foundation for building bridges across differences.
雷诺兹从布朗斯维尔来的时候, 德州, 2011年在STM学习, she spent a year living in the parish house of St. 玛丽在罗克斯伯里的埃格尔斯顿广场.
“我会帮忙整理教区公报, 散步, 教主日学校, and coordinate parishioner volunteers to clean the church. And in addition to my room above the parish kitchen and all the potluck leftovers I could eat, 我收到的是, 对于一个外行女人来说, a much rarer gift: the chance to experience the life of a parish 从 the inside out.
“圣. Mary of the Angels became my greatest teachers of theology,雷诺兹补充道。, who later moved to Brighton but remained an active parishioner of St. Mary’s for the next five years while she continued her studies at BC.
St. Mary of the Angels opened in 1908 to serve working class European immigrants. By the 1980s, the tiny church was sustaining a community of some 40 nationalities. 雷诺兹想知道:圣. Mary's manage to defy the racial, ethnic, and economic fragmentation that has so long defined U.S. parish life in general, and Boston Catholicism in particular?
She conducted oral histories and researched newspaper accounts, 教区的文件, and archdiocesan documents to construct a history of a small, 可怜的, 几十年前的跨种族城市教区, 在, 在梵蒂冈第二次会议之后.
STM院长. 迈克尔·麦卡锡(最左)邀请圣. Mary’s parishioners in attendance to join him in presenting the 校友 Distinguished Service Award to Reynolds. (李Pellegrini)
“圣玛丽, 在我看来, 不只是一个迷人的异类吗, a quirky parish in an iconic Catholic city that had beaten every conceivable odds,雷诺兹说。. “让圣. Mary's unique were visible signs of the constructive communal theological work that had been unfolding there over the course of decades. What I encountered in Roxbury was a community that had stayed alive by making solidarity an ecclesial virtue.”
Her talk highlighted some of examples of this solidarity, such as a layperson-majority parish pastoral council petitioning to move parish funds to a locally Black-operated bank and advocating for a Mass on Saturday evenings in the summers so that working class parishioners could use Sundays to get away 从 the heat of the city. Reynolds also cited the ministry of a dynamic young priest, Fr. 杰克Roussin, who made inroads against gang violence in the 1980s and ‘90s, and the powerful Good Friday Neighborhood Way of the Cross that annually led participants along the path of Egleston Square's own passion.
“I want to make a case that parishes are worth studying, and they're worth studying rigorously and generously, 负责教区事务, 尤其是城市边缘地区, makes legible the organic continuity between the vocations of theology and ministry.
“Today's ecclesial communities are transformed by migration, 位移, 中产阶级化, 大流行时代在实践中发生了变化, 以及其他社会变革的力量. St. Mary's is a way station for people on the move. People would come and stay for a short time or a lifetime, and some would leave or move or settle back in their home countries. 和圣. Mary's was ready to receive whoever showed up next. That's what parishes are, places of sojourn for a migrant church.”
Kathleen Sullivan | University Communications | April 2023