Weekly Book Discussion Group

About

The weekly book discussion group has been meeting for more than 18 years, and generally reads 5 or 6 books a year. We meet weekly on zoom from Thursday from 7:15 - 8:45 pm to discuss and debate current, timely books on contemporary Catholic topics. All are welcome, and no previous experience is needed. We read the books in small sections, a chapter or two at a time, so it's a great, low-pressure way to engage with some inspiring theological, scriptural, and historical sources.

You are always welcome for as much or as a little as you are able to join us! So if you’re reading this and worry that you’ll miss a week, or could do one book that you’re interested in but not every book we’re discussing, or on a particular night you didn’t finish the reading for that night — you are always welcome to be with us. No one is taking attendance or quizzing you - we’re just happy when you’re able to be with us.

For more information or to get our regular zoom link, email Brian Flanagan at [email protected].

To sign up for the book discussion group's email list, which sends out reminders and the zoom link weekly, use the form below:

Book Discussion Group Signup

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Current Book Discussion

We will begin our next book on Thursday, October 1 - parishioner Annie Selak’s The Wounded Church: Tending to the Harm within Catholicism. We’ll read Chapter One, p. 1 - 37 in the print edition, and then will continue following the schedule below. If you would like a pdf sample to begin reading before you receive your copy in the mail, email Brian Flanagan at [email protected].

Her publishers describe the book as follows:

“In The Wounded Church, theologian Annie Selak argues that the Catholic Church must confront its own injuries in order to credibly be the Church. Using a feminist framework, she develops a new ecclesiology around three wounds, racism, sexism, and clericalism, that actively harm the Body of Christ and distort its witness.

Attentive to history, pastoral practice, and lived experience, Selak shows how each wound is both inflicted by the Church and borne within the Church. She offers the resurrected body of Jesus, scarred yet no longer bleeding, as a guiding metaphor for ecclesial renewal, a body that does not deny its wounds but is transformed through them. Drawing on Karl Rahner, she grounds hope in the reign of God while insisting on concrete institutional and spiritual conversion.”

And if you’d like to read a longer review of the book, there’s one here from the National Catholic Reporter.

We’ll be reading according to the following schedule:

October 1 - Chapter One, p. 1-37

October 8 - Chapter Two, p. 38-57

October 15 - Chapters Three, p. 58-80

October 22 - Chapter Four, p. 81-115

October 29 - Chapters Five and Six, p. 116 - 148

November 5 - Chapter Seven and Afterword, p. 149-179

November 12 - Conversation with the Author

And then, later this fall, we’ll begin Gerhard Lohfink’s The Light of Faith and Reason: Israel, Jesus, and the Enlightenment.