Dignity Washington

Dateline: 01 March 2024 — Addressing participants in the international Symposium “Man-Woman: Image of God,” Pope Francis described so-called gender ideology as the “ugliest danger” of our time, because it cancels out the differences that define humanity.

Pope Francis, on Friday, again spoke out against gender theory describing it as an “ugly ideology of our time” that erases all distinctions between men and women. To cancel this difference “is to erase humanity. Man and woman, instead, exist in a fruitful ‘tension’,” he said.

The remarks came as he opened his address to participants in the international Symposium “Man-Woman: Image of God. Towards an Anthropology of Vocations” held in the Vatican on March 1-2.

In the prepared text, the Pope reflected on the theme of the Congress which is aimed at highlighting the anthropological dimension of every vocation.

Indeed, he remarked, “the life of the human being is a vocation” with a relational character: “I exist and live in relation to who generated me, to the reality that transcends me, to others and to the world around me, in which I am called to embrace a specific and personal mission with joy and responsibility.”

This fundamental anthropological truth is sometimes overlooked in today’s cultural context, where human beings tend to be reduced to their mere material and primary needs. Yet, Pope Francis said, they are more than this. Created by God — in His image — man and woman “carry within themselves a desire for eternity and happiness that God himself has planted in their hearts and that they are called to fulfil through a specific vocation.”

“Our being in the world is not a mere fruit of chance, but we are part of a design of love and are invited to go out of ourselves and realize it, for ourselves and for others,” the Pope said.

“We are called to happiness, to the fullness of life, to something great to which God has destined us.”

Recalling Cardinal Saint John Henry Newman’s “Meditations and Prayers,” Pope Francis further remarked that not only have we all been entrusted with a mission, but “each and every one of us is a mission.”

The Pope therefore welcomed the symposium and the studies conducted on this topic because, he said, “they spread awareness of the vocation to which every human being is called by God,” and they are also useful to reflect on today’s challenges, on the ongoing anthropological crisis, and on the need to promote human and Christian vocations.

“Move forward with the courage to discern and risk seeking God’s will.”

~~ Lisa Zengarini, Vatican News (edited by Peter Edwards)

For more information, please read Robert Shine’s March 2, 2024, article “Pope Francis Refers to ‘Gender Ideology’ as the ‘Worst Danger’ Today” at New Ways Ministry here.

The Church traditionally dedicates the month of March to the special veneration of St Joseph. “He was chosen by the eternal Father as the trustworthy guardian and protector of his greatest treasures, namely, his divine Son and Mary, Joseph’s wife,” says St Bernardine of Siena. “He carried out this vocation with complete fidelity until at last God called him, saying ‘Good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your Lord.’” For his leadership of the Holy Family, St Joseph has been declared the protector and patron of the universal Catholic Church.

For decades, Dignity Washington has celebrated St Joseph with a dinner that is truly a community affair requiring many hands to make it happen. This article explains a little about why we celebrate St Joseph and what we do in a community-wide fellowship.

Last Advent season, Dignity Washington’s Liturgy Committee based its Faith Sharing session on Journeying with Joseph in Matthew’s Gospel. March 19th is the Feast of Saint Joseph, as in “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” and it is an Italian holiday as the model of fatherhood, his qualities of protector, provider, and nurturer run all through what is said of him.

Why do we celebrate this festival? Primarily in fulfillment of a vow. Many centuries ago in Sicily, a horrible drought occurred. No rains came; no crops grew; many people starved. The people prayed to God and asked St Joseph to join them through his own intercessions. After thirteen days, the rains came, the crops grew (especially fava beans), and they were saved. They had promised Joseph a festival in his honor and all these centuries later, they and their heirs still keep that promise.

In preparation for the second Assembly of the Synod on Synodality, set for October 2024, the Vatican is again inviting input from the universal church and beyond. DignityUSA will hold Listening Sessions focused on the current questions of how we have responded to the work of the Synod to date, how our church can operate in more synodal ways, and our own experiences being part of a Catholic organization that has operated in a synodal model for decades.

The same questions and process will be used during each session. We hope one works for your schedule. If not, we will develop a mechanism for you to submit your thoughts online. The questions to consider will be sent out in advance of the sessions.

We will have one more session: Saturday, March 2, 2:00–3:30pm ET.

Register now to receive the Zoom link and reminders here.

Following the after-Mass Social on Sunday, February 25, Dignity Washington was blessed to have Marianne Duddy-Burke, Executive Director of DignityUSA share stories of her recent trip to Rome and a meeting with Pope Francis this past October. Marianne addressed approximately 30 people in the social hall and painted a picture of their various experiences.

The Synod On Synodality (last October) and follow-on meetings (set for October 2024) were the main topics. Marianne shared the preparations of her time in Rome along with Sam Albano, the DignityUSA Board Secretary; their multiple meetings with Synod delegates, media, and others in the Vatican; and her sit-down, face-to-face meeting with Pope Francis — a definite hallmark in DignityUSA’s history. The meeting with the Pope is significant because he knew who they were and the groups they represented!

Marianne also mentioned that 13 Dignity communities will have celebrated their 50th Anniversaries by the end of this year. Coming up this year are: Detroit (May), Minneapolis (in the fall), and Pittsburgh (TBD). The reach of Dignity goes beyond our boarder, with our sister groups in England, France, and Australia, who DignityUSA helped organize, also are celebrating 50 years of service to LGBTQIA Catholics!!!

To read more about Marianne’s visit with Pope Francis, go
here.

To learn more about DignityUSA, go here.

Dignity Washington member, Tim Meagher, a retired Associate Professor at Catholic University who also oversaw the Irish Archives there, has written several books including The Columbia Guide to Irish American History. His latest book on the Irish in America, titled Becoming Irish American: The Making of a People from Roanoke to JFK was published in January, 2024. Tim begins this story centuries before when settlers from Britain, Northern Europe, and Normandy came to Ireland and intermingled with the native Gaelic peoples. This mixing over time helps to explain why John F Kennedy’s last name is Irish but his middle name, Fitzgerald, was derived from English settlers originally from Normandy.

Yale University Press, the book’s publisher, provided this summary:

“As millions of Irish immigrants and their descendants created community in the United States over the centuries, they neither remained Irish nor simply became American. Instead, they created a culture and defined an identity that was unique to their circumstances, a new people that they would continually reinvent: Irish Americans.

Historian Timothy J Meagher traces the Irish American experience from the first Irishman to step ashore at Roanoke in 1585 to John F Kennedy’s election as president in 1960.

As he chronicles how Irish American culture evolved, Meagher looks at how various groups adapted and thrived―Protestants and Catholics, immigrants and American born, those located in different geographic corners of the country. He describes how Irish Americans made a living, where they worshiped, and when they married, and how Irish American politicians found particular success, from ward bosses on the streets of New York, Boston, and Chicago to the presidency.

In this sweeping history, Meagher reveals how the Irish American identity was forged, how it has transformed, and how it has held lasting influence on American culture.”

On February 14th, Ash Wednesday, the 2024 Lenten Season began. On that day our scriptures reminded us, as they do every year, of the three spiritual practices of this season: Praying, Fasting, and Almsgiving. For forty days and forty nights, God asks each of us to — not only live and breathe these practices — but to also deeply reflect on our relationship with self and with God. Put simply … Lent is God’s way of inviting you on a 40-day spiritual retreat.

Yes, I mean a retreat! The spiritual practices of praying, fasting and almsgiving are tools to help you along the way. You can follow the traditional Catholic practices or you can be creative. Explore new forms of prayer and spiritual practices. Think about fasting as a discipline or learning about discipline. Being disciplined is the awareness of your need to lean on God for help. Almsgiving is exciting beyond giving money and food and asks us to freely give of ourselves as God freely gives to us. Reflect on the gifts God has given you. Whatever way you choose to express these practices, do them because it gives you joy, and because it brings you closer to God.

As you embark on your Lenten retreat, always remember that you are not alone on this journey to Easter. God is with you along with your Dignity Community, family, and friends. God’s grace and peace!

Here are few links to Lenten Resources:

Message of Pope Francis for Lent 2024
Through the Desert God Leads us to Freedom
View Pope Francis’ message here.

Ignatius Solidarity Network
Lenten 2024: It’s Time to Reflect
Daily Lenten Reflections
Register to receive free daily reflections here.

DignityUSA
Lenten Reflection Series
This free reflection series takes place each Wednesday, February 21 through March 27, from 8–9pm ET. This Zoom series will include a presentation and group discussion on the week’s scripture reading. Register here.

As we are getting closer to starting the construction stage of the new space at the Dignity Center and while we have cleared away most items, we have art and other things for sale left over from the old Dignity Center that need a new home.

If you are interested in acquiring a few items, stop by the Dignity Center on Sunday, February 25, from 3–5pm, at 1601 18th Street, NW, Suite 1 (corner of 18th and Q Streets). We will accept your best offer as a tax-deductible donation that just happens to come with a gift.

If you need a large mirror (or two) or some matted prints/photographs, we may have something for you. We accept cash, credit cards, and checks.

Press the buzzer of the Imperial House condominium to gain entrance and be directed to Suite 1 which is the Dignity Washington office.

The National Catholic Reporter honored Sr Jeannine Gramick on Saturday afternoon, February 3rd, at the Paulist House of Mission and Studies in NE Washington. The reception was lovely and the presentation of the award was witnessed by a standing room only group of friends and supporters of Sr Jeannine. Loretto Sr Jeannine Gramick was named the National Catholic Reporter’s Newsmaker of 2023. After receiving her award, she gave a beautiful thank you speech and specifically mentioned three people who inspired her and quoted from each: 1) the founder of the School Sisters of Notre Dame, 2) the founder of the Sisters of Loretto, and 3) her father. In upcoming Bulletins, we will provide some of those quotes and things she learned from Pope Francis.

Dignity Washington and the congregation of St Margaret’s will celebrate a joint liturgy of Ash Wednesday at St Margaret’s Episcopal Church on Wednesday, February 14th, at 6:30pm. The liturgy will also be live-streamed via Zoom here.

We hope you can join us.

By all accounts, Mother Mary Lange was a holy woman. She was also a revolutionary in every way that a visibly Black nun ministering in the slaveholding and racially segregated U.S. South and Roman Catholic Church could be during her pioneering tenure in religious life. Radical and loving, Mother Lange refused to accept racism and sexism.

On September 20, 1835, Mother Lange — then a 40- or 50-year-old consecrated religious living in Baltimore, Maryland, who could speak French and Spanish fluently — penned a letter to Father Louis Regis Deluol who was the slaveholding superior of the Sulpician priests in the United States. She accepted his request to have two members of her community assume the management of the domestic and infirmary duties at the nation’s first Catholic seminary in nearby Emmitsburg, Maryland. Although her small community of nuns, called the Oblate Sisters of Providence, was a teaching order and descended from enslaved and free Catholics from the United States and the Caribbean, their subordinated status as poor Black women in America’s brutal slave society and the slaveholding Roman Catholic Church left them few options beyond accepting Deluol’s request.

Nonetheless, Mother Lange courageously demanded recognition of her members’ consecrated status as women religious and protection as they prepared to undertake the perilous work among the slaver priests and priests-in-training at their historic Catholic settlement at Mount St Mary.

Unlike most of their counterparts, Lange and her Oblate sisters did not enslave people. They also did not employ racial or class barriers to admission into their congregation or their schools.

Although the existence of her community of Black sisters was deemed a “profanation of the habit” by members of Baltimore’s slaveholding clerical community, Mother Lange transformed her school, soon called St. Frances Academy, into Baltimore’s first formal Catholic school open to Black children, free and enslaved. Her multiethnic and multilingual sisterhood also began preserving the vocations of other devout Black Catholic women who evidenced a revolutionary commitment to Black education and call to religious life in the slaveholding church.

In perhaps her most radical and loving move, Lange decided that her community would not accept the racist and sexist stigma that a woman born into slavery lacked the virtue necessary to enter religious life. Before abolition, the Oblate Sisters of Providence admitted into their ranks at least eight women born into slavery.

When Pope Francis formally decreed that Lange had lived a life of virtue and advanced her cause from servant of God to venerable on June 22, 2023, just three months after he repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery, which in the 15th century authorized European invasions of Africa and the Americas and facilitated the enslavement of millions

of Africans and Native Americans, he officially linked Lange to the long Catholic struggle against the sin and scourge of white supremacy, misogynoir, and segregation in the modern church.

Mother Lange’s extraordinary journey in our church illuminates the often-erased African foundations of American Catholicism, the transnational dimensions of African American Catholicism, and the central roles that Black women and girls played in the making of U.S. Catholicism—especially the tradition free from the most virulent aspects of white supremacy.

Written by Shannen Dee Williams