Queer Thriving in Catholic Education


Book Description

This book provides readers with the opportunity to go beyond anecdote and supposition in order to get a fuller grasp of research around Catholic education and LGBTQ+ matters. This is an edited collection of chapters which explores LGBTQ+ matters in relation to Catholic education. Although the field of Catholic Education Studies has grown exponentially over the past two decades, little if any attention has been published specifically about the place of LGBTQ+ students (and teachers) in the context of Catholic education. This edited book presents the various strands of research about Catholic education and LGBTQ+ inclusion. More specifically, this edited book of chapters addresses a number of broader themes including: • Is it possible for Catholic education to sit in harmony with the concerns of LGBTQ+ inclusive education? • What does it mean to ‘queer’ education at all? How does this sit in relation to Catholic perspectives on the purpose of Catholic education? • When it comes to LGBTQ+ issues in relation to Catholic education, what is the research agenda? • How might Catholic schools move beyond a ‘pastoral accommodation’ approach to LGBTQ+ students? • What does the evidence from research in Catholic schools indicate? Are they places of inclusion, hospitality, and welcome for LGBTQ+ young people?




Queer Thriving in Religious Schools


Book Description

This book offers an account of religious schooling committed to ‘queer-thriving’ and envisions how queer staff and students can live their lives without being ‘accommodated’ within heteronormative religious traditions. Engaging with queer theological perspectives across the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions, the book begins by situating queer thriving as a viable part of the work of the religious school, and not just as something reserved for progressive education more broadly. Taking three areas that are typically used to justify religious heteronormativity (religious texts, religious values, religious rituals), it engages queer theologies to showcase how an educational approach committed to queer thriving can be enacted in religious schools in ways that are also theologically sensitive. The book then explores how religious school communities can navigate differences around queerness and religion in ways that are supportive of queer staff and students. It takes desire as an everyday reality in classrooms and applies a queer lens to this to challenge heteronormativity and to imagine alternative modes of relationship between staff, students, and communities that enable queer staff and students to thrive. Showcasing possibilities of resistance for the opposition between religious and queer concerns, it will appeal to researchers, postgraduates and academics in the fields of religion and education, whilst also benefitting those working across philosophy of education and educational theory, sex education, sociology of education, social justice education, queer theologies, religious studies, and sociology of religion.




Creating Safe Environments for LGBT Students


Book Description

Make sure your Catholic school's LGBT students are getting the support they need Creating Safe Environments for LGBT Students is a comprehensive training guidebook for educators who are committed to diversity and the full inclusion of LGBT students in every aspect of the Catholic high school experience. Based on five years of pilot testing in Catholic schools, this unique book emphasizes safe-staff training in integrating the Church's pastoral, social, and moral dimensions with the special needs of LGBT students. The book presents strategies and resources for building safer schools, helpful materials for communicating with parents, and general guidelines for developing and maintaining professional helping relationships with LGBT students. Based on a “training the trainer” model, Creating Safe Environments for LGBT Students encourages the development of grassroots leadership within the school. This unique book promotes a positive framework for navigating the challenging landscape of the Catholic tradition and the LGBT experience as it helps to establish anti-harassment and anti-bullying protocols for school environments and models for developing LGBT student support groups and gay/straight student alliances. The book promotes role-play by students, alumni, teachers, and parents—a hallmark of the ministry work and training methods of the Catholic Pastoral Committee on Sexual Minorities—and is flexible enough to allow each school's individual climate and culture to be respected. Creating Safe Environments for LGBT Students includes: * first-hand stories from students and teachers * realistic, dynamic, and creative role-play scenarios that explore various relationships between students, teachers, parents, administrators, and the school board * opening prayer and meditation rituals * a special foreword by Bishop Thomas J. Gumbleton, one of the few Catholic bishops to publicly affirm LGBT persons * an extensive bibliography and glossary regarding the experiences, language, culture, and spirituality of LGBT youth * the latest research findings on at-risk behaviors of LGBT teenagers * training handouts that are easy to duplicate and use as transparencies * a manual log that can be used as a training diary * and much more! Creating Safe Environments for LGBT Students is an essential resource for faculty and staff members at Catholic high schools, particularly school administrators, chaplains, campus ministers, psychologists, social workers, and counselors.




Being Gay and Lesbian in a Catholic High School


Book Description

The only study of its kind, Being Gay and Lesbian in a Catholic High School offers compelling evidence to Catholic educators, clergy, and laypeople that their superb academic institutions are not fulfilling the clear mandate of the Church on inclusive, loving behavior toward sexual minorities. This powerful and moving book presents personal testimonies and an original study of Catholic students' attitudes toward gays and lesbians, as well as reprinting the actual teachings of the Church on homosexuals and homosexuality. To view an excerpt online, find the book in our QuickSearch catalog at www.HaworthPress.com.




On Liking the Other


Book Description

A 2022 SPE Outstanding Book Award Winner On Liking the Other: Queer Subjects and Religious Discourses studies the intersection of religious and queer discourses in teacher education. It looks at the sometimes difficult topics rooted in these two particular discourses, which are often seen as unwelcome in both public and private educational spaces. In engaging in such a conversation, the authors seek the ways that these discourses, while steeped in discontent, dilemma, and difficulty, might also offer ways to reorient ourselves amidst twenty-first century educational realities. More to the point, the text puts queer histories and logics into conversations with theologies through the concept of liking. Eschewing the typical antagonism that often defines the relationships between religious and queer discourses, this book looks for resonances and overlaps that might provide new habits for conducting the work of meeting in teacher education classrooms and educational worlds. It is an excellent text for a variety of classrooms and courses. On Liking the Other is structured in three sections, with each section divided into two chapters. Within each section, the authors explore an overarching theme through their distinct, albeit related, perspectives. This is to allow each perspective to be given its due, while also drawing on the knowledge of one another at particular junctures. Like a conversation in person, this recognizes the ways conversations (as opposed to monologues) happen and, in doing so, helps to add clarification and additional details. Kevin J. Burke is a curriculum theorist whose scholarship operates at the intersection of religion, masculinities, and English education. Adam J. Greteman is a philosopher of education whose scholarship operates at the intersection of queer theories, sexualities, and Art education. Both authors are deeply invested in the work of Teacher Education, particularly in thinking through the conundrums of engaging pre-service teachers who bring to Teacher Education classrooms and eventually their own classrooms their religious, gendered, and sexual subjectivities. The conversations here, attempting to orient ourselves differently, are meant to open up space for complicated conversations that are foundational to the work of curriculum. Perfect for courses such as: Queer Theory in Education | Multicultural Education | Critical Educational Foundations | Human Diversity, Power and Opportunity in Social Institutions | Diversity in Education | Diversity and Inclusive Teaching | Multicultural and Equity Studies in Education







Homophobia in the Hallways


Book Description

Section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms ensures equality regarding sexual orientation and gender identity in Canada. Despite this, gay, lesbian, and gender-nonconforming teachers in publicly-funded Catholic schools in Ontario and Alberta are being fired for living lives that Church leaders claim run contrary to Catholic doctrine about non-heterosexuality. Meanwhile, requests from students to establish Gay/Straight Alliances are often denied. In Homophobia in the Hallways, Tonya D. Callaghan interrogates institutionalized homophobia and transphobia in the publicly-funded Catholic school systems of Ontario and Alberta. Featuring twenty interviews with students and teachers who have faced overt discrimination in Catholic schools, the book blends theoretical inquiry and real-world case study, making Callaghan’s study a unique insight into religiously-inspired heterosexism and genderism. She uncovers the causes and effects of the long-standing disconnect between Canadian Catholic schools and the Charter by comparing the treatment of and attitudes towards lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer teachers and students in these publicly-funded systems.




LGBTQ+ Educators in Catholic Schools


Book Description

Since 2007, a Catholic LGBTQ+ organization called New Ways Ministry has documented over 60 cases of LGBTQ+ educators and allies who have been fired from Catholic schools throughout the US. The firings are met with significant local and national public outcry, resulting in fragmented, polarized, and wounded Catholic school communities throughout the nation. Who are these educators? Why are they fired? And is there a better way to respond to the presence of LGBTQ+ employees (as well as students and families) in Catholic education? Dr. Ish Ruiz responds to this controversy with a new theological framework, based on Pope Francis’s vision for a synodal Church, that will aid Catholic schools in an effort to include LGBTQ+ educators while remaining faithful to the Catholic tradition. His framework offers a multifaceted approach to this issue by examining the fields of pastoral ministry, sexual morality, ecclesiology, and Catholic social teaching to craft an inclusive synodal vision for Catholic education. More importantly, Ruiz answers Pope Francis’s calls for a Church that listens by lifting up the stories of LGBTQ+ educators and their invaluable contributions to Catholic schools. This book calls upon Catholic school leaders (including bishops, diocesan officials, school administrators, and other stakeholders) to treat LGBTQ+ educators with compassionate justice and to foster a school environment where all people, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, can feel respected, welcomed, and cherished as beings made in the Image of God.




Queer and Catholic


Book Description

How does one reconcile the tension between the community of one’s own Catholic upbringing and a sexuality and gender identity that may be in conflict with some of the tenets of the faith – especially when one is a member of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex community? Queer and Catholic offers a source of comfort to members of these communities, focusing on not only practicing Catholics, but also the entire experience of growing up Catholic. This unique book discusses Catholicism beyond its religiosity and considers its implications as a culture of origin. This widely varied and entertaining book pulls together a comprehensive collection of essays, stories, and poetry that together represent an honest and engaging reflection of being a queer person within the Catholic experience.