Four women panelists will address clergy sexual abuse and the crisis facing the Catholic Church at a special event at on Sunday, September 30, at 6:45 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.
The event will be moderated by Libby Professor Cathleen Kaveny, who holds appointments in both Boston College Law School and the Department of Theology. The author of four books and more than 100 articles and essays, and a longtime columnist for Commonweal Magazine, she is particularly interested in the relationship between law, morality, and religion. Kaveny is chair of the board of trustees of the Journal of Religious Ethics, and past president of the Society of Christian Ethics, the major professional society for scholars of Christian ethics and moral theology in North America.
Michelle Sterk Barrett’s deep appreciation for Catholicism was instilled through her experiences with the youth group at Church of St. Luke’s in El Cajon, California, at Villanova University, and in a post-graduate year of service with the Archdiocesan Office of Urban Affairs in Hartford, Conn. She has spent nearly two decades working in Jesuit higher education, at one time as assistant director of PULSE, Boston College's pioneering service-learning program. Barrett, who earned a master's degree in higher education administration from the Lynch School of Education in 1996, is currently director of community-based learning at the College of the Holy Cross. Â
Maria Teresa (MT) Dávila '07 is a lecturer in theology and religious studies at Merrimack College. An activist scholar whose publications include works on race, racial justice and theological ethics; Latino/a mujerista ethics and public theology; immigration; and the use of the social sciences in Christian ethics, she is the coeditor of Living With(out) Borders: Theological Ethics and Peoples on the Move (Orbis, 2016). Her scholarly work and local advocacy efforts focus on family homelessness, refugees and racial justice; her main concern is the question of Christian discipleship in the U.S. context.
Heather Rowan-Kenyon, is an active member of the Family Mass community at St. Ignatius Parish. She is an associate professor in the higher education program at the Lynch School of Education at Boston College, and her research focuses on the experiences of students underrepresented in higher education. She is currently the co-chair of the advisory committee for the University's Church in the 21st Century Center, which serves as a catalyst and resource for the renewal of the Catholic Church in the United States.