“His mother’s love opened him up again … and gave his life meaning, purpose, and hope, which I think is probably the best task that churches can do for anybody who lives with a highly stigmatized condition—to offer love and friendship,” said Swinton, in an online lecture on April 8. 

Swinton, the chair of divinity and religious studies and professor of practical theology and pastoral care at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, was the keynote speaker at Fordham’s Spirituality & Disability Symposium, which took place on April 8 and 9. The forum featured scholars who discussed how spirituality and disability intersect in our daily lives. 

Swinton’s research and teaching are largely inspired by his eclectic background in health care and religion. For 16 years, he worked as a nurse for people with mental health challenges and learning disabilities; he also worked as a hospital chaplain. He currently serves as an ordained minister of the Church of Scotland. 

In his presentation “Spirituality and Disability: What Do We Mean and Why Does It Matter?” Swinton explained how society can use spirituality as a lens for a better life, especially people who live with disabilities. 

A Reimagined Jesus With Down Syndrome

Everyone has their own idea of what God looks like. Our imagination is deeply influenced by the culture in which we live, Swinton said, citing the work of theologian Karl Barth. He showed the audience a modern version of the Last Supper painting, where Jesus and his disciples all have Down syndrome. It’s a powerful image because it reminds us that both God and our society are diverse, he said.  

“Paul talks about the body of Christ … the place where we see, feel, live out that image. And the thing that marks the body of Christ is not homogeneity, but diversity … And so when we recognize all the different aspects of the image of God as it’s revealed in all of the different bodily and psychological conditions that we go through, we begin to understand what it means to be in God’s image,” said Swinton. “It’s together that we live in the image of God.”

Finding Strength in Meaning and Connection

Another important aspect of spirituality is our need for connection, Swinton said. Humans evolved to become spiritual beings because of their deep desire to relate to something beyond themselves, he said, citing a theory from David Hay, a zoologist who wrote a book about spirituality. 

“The one thread that runs through all definitions of spirituality is this idea of relationality—that somehow we need to be in a relationship,” Swinton said. “Spirituality has to do with being in a relationship. Maybe with God … with others … with your community, but it’s always there.” 

However, people with disabilities are often shunned by society, he said. 

“The problem is that we have a pathogenic culture—an individual culture that tends to stigmatize and alienate people who are different,” Swinton said. “Stigma is a deeply spiritual problem. It shrinks your world, takes away the possibilities. And unless somebody can rescue you, that can be your life—stuck in that meaningless place, where your diagnosis takes away everything.”

Swinton said that excluding people with disabilities is the opposite of what God calls us to do—“to respect diversity, to recognize the image of God in each one of us, and to come together.” 

“We need to shift and change and take spirituality seriously if we’re going to have the kind of community where each one of us has a space, place, and voice,” Swinton said.  

A Q&A session following Swinton’s presentation was moderated by Francis X. McAloon, S.J., Ph.D., associate professor of Christian spirituality and Ignatian studies at the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education. The symposium was co-sponsored by GRE and Fordham’s Research Consortium on Disability. 

This week, the sighting of the crescent moon will mark the holiest month in the Muslim calendar, and Ramadan will commence.  Muslims believe that the scripture was revealed to the prophet Mohammed during Ramadan; the annual observance of the holiday is one of the five pillars of Islam. During this month, Muslims fast from food, drink, smoking, and sex between the hours of dawn and dusk, and they aim to abstain from gossip, arguments, and lying. Ramadan is also a time where Muslims focus on charity and donating their time and money in service of others.

While the basic customs and traditions of the holiday remain the same this year, COVID-19 restrictions will prevent Alsiadi and other Muslims from sharing those traditions with loved ones.

“I am psychologically preparing to spend Ramadan at home,” said Alsiadi, recalling that even during the Islamist uprising in Syria from 1979 to 1982, he was still able to visit the mosque. “Those were difficult times, but even with daily shootings, we were still able to go to the mosque and pray. We had comfort in being able to sit together, to read the Quran together among our elders.” 

Now, mosques and other places of worship around the world have closed. “The mosques cry when there are no worshippers,” says Alsiadi. “The impact is not just on us as individuals, but it’s also on the house of God.” 

But, he said, Muslims can still find solace in the symbolic togetherness of being called to prayer at the same time and facing Mecca when they pray separately in their homes.  

Students and parents face particular challenges during Ramadan, not just this year but every year, said Zein Murib, Ph.D., assistant professor of Political Science.

“Ramadan often falls during the school year. Last year, Ramadan took place during finals, and I heard from many students who felt that they were alone in negotiating fasting and prayer alongside the rigors of late-night study sessions and back-to-back exams,” said Murib. “This year will be no different, and I wonder how finals and the compounded circumstances of COVID-19 and New York’s pause will impact Fordham’s Muslim students.” 

Alsiadi said that though this is an unprecedented and challenging time, we all have to do our part to keep each other safe. This includes being careful about our words. 

“Islam is peace. If we launch a war against a virus, then that lends itself to discriminating against people who are sick,” he said. “We have to be careful of that.”

Despite all of the disruptions this year, Ramadan remains a time “that we do things from our hearts,” said Alsiadi. “We have to be patient. Ramadan is an opportunity for Muslims to get an infinite amount of hasanats (credit for good deeds) by cleansing their soul by helping around. We must share what we have. If you have enough, share with those who have nothing.”

Tumultuous times can offer an opportunity to deepen one’s spiritual practice. This has been a focus for Muhammad Faruque, Ph.D., George Ames Endowed Postdoctoral Fellow at Fordham, who is spending Ramadan away from his family this year.

“One should meditate on the question of fasting, ponder the inner significance of an ascetic practice— what it does to the body and the soul, and how it can make oneself a better, compassionate human being.” Faruque said.  “For me, this Ramadan will be an opportunity to retreat into the inner sanctum of the self and explore the possibilities of inner happiness.”

For years, he had dreamed of being a symphonic orchestra director. But his father, a well-known pulmonologist in the Dominican Republic, had different plans for his son. So D’Oleo went along with his father’s wishes and started medical school. In this third year, he dropped out. 

At the time, he underwent surgery to alleviate chronic knee pain. While recovering in a hospital bed, he saw a TV news report about the dearth of children’s hospitals in the Dominican Republic. The camera cut to a long line of patients waiting outside an emergency room—including a little girl who caught his eye.  

“She was crying, and she was rubbing her left knee because she had a lot of pain,” D’Oleo recalled. “And when I saw that, I thought to myself, Maximo: You are a privileged boy coming from a family that is wealthy. You have a health condition, but you had surgery in a good hospital. You have your loved ones surrounding you, taking care of you.” 

He reconsidered how he wanted to spend the rest of his life. That same year, he returned to medical school on crutches. 

“To experience sickness made me better understand people who are suffering,” he said. 

D’Oleo is now a 52-year-old general pediatrician at Saint Joseph’s Medical Center in Yonkers, New York, and a student in the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education’s advanced certificate program in spiritual direction. 

“I was trained to take care of physical conditions, like asthma, ear infections, throat infections, abdominal pain, and anemia,” he said. “But I started seeing more and more kids with a lot of emotional problems—problems related to family dynamics, the environment, social issues … I thought to myself, these people need something different than what we are offering here right now.”

Life and Death in the ICU

Over the past two decades, D’Oleo has been practicing medicine in the Dominican Republic and the U.S., where he now resides. He recalled several memories that shaped the doctor he is today. 

In his final year of medical school, he was working at a children’s hospital when he found a girl crying in pain. A nurse explained that the patient had a spinal tumor and the painkillers weren’t working. The girl was crying so loudly that nearby patients couldn’t sleep. So D’Oleo picked her up and wandered throughout the hospital, carrying her on his back. He brought her back to her bed, where she fell asleep—and stayed asleep for the rest of the night. 

“That event was a confirmation that I was on the right path,” D’Oleo said. 

In 1993, he graduated from Universidad Iberoamericana with his medical degree and treated patients in his native country and new home. He cared for children in pediatric intensive care units whose conditions faltered “in a snap” and couldn’t be saved, he said. He treated children attached to ventilators who, to his surprise, survived. He learned how to talk to the parents of young patients who passed away. But perhaps most importantly, he said, he learned what it means to be a good doctor. 

“To be a great doctor is to stay with the patient—to be there for them. That they feel that you are really taking care of them, accompanying them,” D’Oleo said. 

Tending to Spiritual Needs of Patients and Families—Especially the Mothers

To better “accompany” his patients, D’Oleo is learning to tend to not only their bodies but also their spirit. 

His motivation begins with his family. D’Oleo was raised by religious parents, including a Catholic mother who showed him the value in caring for people’s spiritual needs. And a practicing Catholic himself, he understood the power of prayer. 

D’Oleo said the program is teaching him how to be a better listener, especially with his patients’ mothers. Historically, women have been marginalized, he said, and have spiritual needs that many people don’t know how to treat. He is now learning to pay more attention to the mothers’ narratives, including small words and expressions that hint at what’s happening in their lives. 

Through the GRE program, he said he also learned the importance of avoiding proselytizing. 

“You are a companion to allow people to discover [themselves],” D’Oleo said.  

At the end of the program, he said he will be a certified spiritual director who can better serve his patients and church community members. D’Oleo said he will live the rest of his life in service to others, just like his wife Denise Jimenez-D’Oleo, who passed away last year after battling breast cancer. 

“You have to do something in your life to be useful to others. Your life is not only focused on you,” D’Oleo said. “While you are here on this planet, on this Earth … make a better world.” 

“Why do I find myself representing the children of former clients?” he wondered. “When will all of this hurt end? Most importantly, where is God in all of this and why am I a witness to such horror?”

He started digging deeper into his motivations for becoming a public defender, and realized he was drawn to his clients’ plight. “I knew I cared for them and was always fighting for them,” he says, “but I didn’t realize just how deeply they had touched me.”

Booth recognized that there was a spiritual element to addressing the causes of criminality and the problems of mass incarceration and recidivism, and that there were limits to what he could do in his role as a lawyer, both from an ethical and a practical standpoint. He knew that it was inappropriate to discuss matters of faith with his clients, that “melding the roles of attorney and minister can add another injustice upon the accused person,” as he put it, but he also had no plans to give up his day job.

A Route to Spiritual Freedom

So in 2009, after considering ways to help people like his clients beyond the courtroom walls, and after the loss of a child to stillbirth, Booth started a journey toward deeper spiritual reflection and practice. He began further exploring Ignatian spirituality and took the Nineteenth Annotation, or the “Ignatian retreat in daily life,” a way to complete the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius in a less intensive time period than the traditional 30-day retreat.

He also felt that the Spiritual Exercises could prove as valuable a healing process to incarcerated people as they were to him.

“I know there are many routes to that goal of freedom for everybody, and [Ignatian spirituality] is just one potential route,” Booth says. “Since it meant something to me, I thought it might be meaningful to others.”

That thinking led Booth to Fordham’s Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education (GRE), where he completed a master’s degree in religious education in 2014. His studies culminated in a thesis titled “Prison Ministry’s Quest for Spiritual Freedom in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola,” which explored how the Exercises could be applied within a prison setting to provide emotional support and spiritual freedom to inmates, and to help them make a successful transition to society after release.

“You can still bring the spirituality [into prisons], and you bring portions of the Exercises,” Booth says. “They need that psychology. They need to be able to somehow express what they’re going through in a safe environment. A lot of [inmates]will say that they can’t do this on their own.”

Bringing Guidance Behind the Walls

Booth’s desire upon completing his master’s was to become a part-time prison minister outside of his professional jurisdiction and establish a prison ministry program in his and other parishes in Jersey City. As he continued to look into bringing those goals to fruition, he met Zach Presutti, S.J., a Jesuit scholastic and a psychotherapist with an interest in prison ministry. Booth gave Presutti a copy of his thesis, and Presutti realized it was the exact kind of spiritual guidance he wanted his new nonprofit, Thrive for Life, to provide for the incarcerated.

Booth drew on his thesis to create a brochure for Thrive for Life, “From Fear to Freedom: Spiritual Exercises Behind Prison Walls,” which functions as a guide for those providing Ignatian spiritual direction to inmates. Meanwhile, he began volunteering with Thrive for Life as a spiritual director within the prison setting.

Now, several times a month, Booth visits with inmates in New York—at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, the State Correctional Institution in Otisville, and the Manhattan Detention Complex, also known as the Tombs—leading them through an abridged version of the Spiritual Exercises. He has become one of the core volunteer spiritual directors with Thrive for Life.

“[When we met], it was clear to me that this man was a disciple of Jesus,” Presutti says of Booth. “I saw someone who could really accompany the men behind the walls in their spiritual life.”

Booth relishes seeing inmates open up as they transition to life outside the prison walls.

“They can just kind of let go and be themselves and express themselves,” he says. “And as time goes on, you see them expressing more and more and more, individually, and collectively.”

Breaking the Cycle, Building Relationships

The relationships between Thrive for Life’s spiritual directors and the inmates with whom they work does not end once the inmates are released from prison. One former inmate now works full-time at Thrive for Life. Many others gather once a month for a Sunday dinner at the Church of St. Francis Xavier, where the organization is based. These dinners not only include volunteers and former inmates but also family members and partners. Thrive for Life recently opened Ignacio House, a Bronx residence with space for 20 to 24 men who have recently been released from incarceration.

Booth himself is working to expand his thesis into a book-length text that would serve as a manual for the organization, and he recently contributed an essay on the stressors of racism in inmates’ lives to Today I Gave Myself Permission to Dream: Race and Incarceration in America, published by the University of San Francisco Press. He also provides one-on-one spiritual direction for parishioners at St. Francis Xavier through Charis NYC, and for two inmates on death row at San Quentin State Prison in California, corresponding with them by letter.

Meanwhile, his workload as a public defender, was made more manageable by the bail reform measures New Jersey instituted two years ago, eliminating cash bail and setting new standards on releasing individuals based on whether they pose a danger to society. He is now able to focus on processing cases and appearing for a smaller number of trial cases. Beyond that, his volunteer work as a spiritual director has given him new perspective on his day job, and he says his colleagues have reacted very positively when they find out about his life as a spiritual guide.

Booth credits his wife, Nancy Mendez-Booth, with being at the center of everything he does, but he says it was his time at Fordham’s Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education that laid the foundation for his current work and provided the opportunity to explore how to practice his faith in service of others.

“Courses were geared toward trying to live out your faith in the modern world with constant interaction with the real world,” Booth says.

“Fordham made me into the best spiritual director that I could be.”

This conversation is more critical than ever, said keynote speaker, Patrick J. Ryan, S.J., the Laurence J. McGinley Professor of Religion and Society. In the wake of the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse scandal, it is important to recognize that sexuality has a sacred meaning in each religion.

“I want to draw your attention to how very human forces, male and female, interact with each other in the imaginative creation of worlds of faith, worlds of spirituality,” Father Ryan said. “How, in particular, do our understandings of human sexuality color how those of us who are Jews, Christians, and Muslims think about God?”

The Bible says that God created Adam, the first human being, as both male and female. (Eve was created from one of Adam’s ribs.) This duality continues to be found in all aspects of life, including marriage, Father Ryan said. It can also be seen in male and female images in the Book of Genesis and the Song of Songs. But one of the most important texts in Judaism, the Zohar, takes a step further and suggests that humanity itself “mirrors and magnifies the Lord God,” he said.  

In the same vein, Christian texts show spirituality through sexuality. For example, an autobiography by Saint Teresa of Avila, a 16th-century Christian mystic and writer, portrays the soul and God as passionate lovers, Father Ryan said. She uses graphic imagery to show the angelic piercing of her heart with the spear of God’s love: “When he drew it out, I thought he was drawing them  [her entrails]out with it and he left me completely afire with a great love for God.”

The Quran also denotes spirituality through sexual language, he said. The basmalah blessing, which begins every chapter of the Quran but one, uses words that associate “the mercy of God” with a mother’s womb.

“To connect the mercy of God with a feminine physical characteristic is to understand God’s perfection as including all that is most tender in created reality, including the generative and loving characteristics of others,” Father Ryan said.

Although much of the main lecture focused on heterosexual love, respondent Amir Hussain, Ph.D., professor of theological studies at Loyola Marymount University, took a detour from the night’s discourse to reflect on the dangers faced by the LGBTQ community.

“I think of Islamic psychologists from Los Angeles, where I live, who worry about losing their license if they are anything but heteronormative,” he said. “And I wonder how we got to that place where we can hate people for the love that God has put between them.”

For Hussain, it’s a personal issue, as he was an undergraduate at the University of Toronto during the “plague years” of the ’80s, when he said he attended one too many funerals for his friends who died of HIV and AIDS.

“We have to speak out when our gay, lesbian, queer, trans, and bisexual brothers and sisters are threatened,” Hussain said. “We have to lift up the work and voices of LGBTQ scholars and activists, such as Scott Kugle at Emory University, who remind us of the inherent dignity of all of us—regardless of our sexuality.”

The scholar who delivered the Jewish response, Sarit Kattan Gribetz, Ph.D., assistant professor of theology at Fordham, compared two Biblical texts from the Old Testament: Song of Songs and Ezekiel 16. Both stories use the metaphor of a romantic partnership to show God’s relationship with Israel, she said. Only one relationship is healthy though, while the other is marred by manipulation and abuse.

Gribetz’s juxtapositions were often stark. In Song of Songs, the narrator portrays a romantic relationship between a man (God) and a woman (Jerusalem as the spouse of the Lord). Gribetz described the scenes that unfold between the lovers: “A series of kisses, love described as sweeter than wine, fragrant oils, and secluded chambers.”

Ezekiel 16, by contrast, takes a tragic turn. In it, God (a man) saves the people of Jerusalem (a woman) from slavery in Egypt, but is betrayed by the very people he rescues. The text is fraught with dark imagery: an unbathed newborn lying in the blood of her after-birth, nakedness, suffering, and violent threats.

But in these two texts, there is something to be said about humanity, Gribetz said. The stories paint a realistic portrait of the possible intersections among sexuality, spirituality, and love of God—both positive and negative.

“I chose to share with you this evening not only the positive but also the negative, not only the benevolent but also the malevolent, to highlight the empowering dimensions of religious texts, but also to acknowledge those parts of our traditions that are most problematic,” Gribetz said.

“So that we can imagine and construct together models of partnership—human and divine—that are based on mutual love and consent, rather than abuse of power and violation of dignity.”

“The caregiver often has things going on in their own life and focusing on the patient’s experience is something we, as caregivers, want to always have on our minds,” said Berry, who graduated in May with a doctorate in ministry from the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education (GRE).

In April, Berry organized an event at the multispecialty hospital called “Walking the Patient Experience: Labyrinth Meditation,” where she asked staff to reflect on a patient who challenged or inspired them. Afterwards, they were invited to take a walk on a labyrinth, an intricate circular path, on a canvas that was lined with unworn patient socks.

The idea was inspired by lessons she learned in the Foundations in Pastoral and Practical Theology course, taught by Tom Beaudoin, Ph.D., an associate professor of religion, where she explored how objects and everyday materials can be used to promote spiritual growth.

“In chaplaincy, we integrate spirituality, behavioral health, mental health, and emotional health as well as education and holistic care, which looks at the whole person,” said Berry.

“[Labyrinth meditation] was a meaningful way for the spiritual care department to create more awareness about patient experience, to support staff, and to bring to life the sacredness of the hospital space.”

As participants made their journey towards the center of the labyrinth, they could reflect on several things, including a patient’s suffering, how caregivers coped with their patient’s struggles, and how they experience compassion for them as their caregivers.

“When you work with patients for a long time, you get to know them,” said Berry. “If their health deteriorates or they die, sometimes that grief can linger.”

Berry also provided a wooden finger labyrinth for participants who were not able to walk the full-size labyrinth. The small-scale, portable labyrinth allowed them to trace the path to the center with their fingers. Through the exercises, participants reflected on a variety of other personal experiences, she said.

“One of the volunteers shared that when she looks at the four quadrants of the labyrinth, she thinks of the four seasons,” said Berry. “And as she walks through each of them she reflects on the season of [her]life, considering where she has been, where she is, and what may be unfolding next for her in her life.”

Berry views the labyrinth walk as a form of meditation that could inspire hospital staff to slow down and better understand their patients’ diverse needs and perspectives.

“The nice thing about the labyrinth is that it’s interfaith,” she said. “People may understand it as prayer or a contemplative experience to reflect and be aware of their bodies and what it means for their foot to hit the ground. The goal is to allow your body to move through the circles, twists, and turns. And trust that you will get to the center.”

“In most of my ministry work, I’ve worked with women because we had a really hard time getting young men to show up for anything,” said Baker, who was serving as director of campus ministry at Mercyhurst University in Erie, Pennsylvania.

He wondered if the absence of young Catholic men was a sign that the programming was not relevant in their lives.

“I simply wanted to ask—where are they and what are we doing wrong?” said Baker, who graduated this year with a doctorate in ministry from Fordham’s Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education. The hybrid doctoral program allowed him to take many of his classes online and complete the degree remotely.

“Before I started this program, it was hard for me to see the direct connections between ministry, theology, and spirituality,” he said. “These were three things that I knew were central to my work, but I couldn’t always articulate or see how they all connected.”

His doctoral thesis, “Men For and With Others: Engaging the Stories of College Men and Exploring Pastoral Postures,” aimed to examine some of the challenges of reaching college-aged men of diverse backgrounds and experiences.

The project led him to research topics in philosophy, spirituality, masculinity, gender, and feminism, along with current practices related to campus ministry in Catholic universities.

He also organized a focus group with college-aged men to develop potential interview questions for other young men who were disaffiliated from their faith. He later carried out the interviews at two Catholic campuses in the Northeast.

“I was very intentional in my work, especially in my interviews with people from some diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds,” he said. “That’s where you get into layers of privilege. Privilege isn’t just about men versus women. Privilege gets wrapped up in race, culture, and sexuality as well.”

Through the interviews, Baker learned that getting young men to participate in campus ministry was not a matter of “simply winning them over.”

Too often, he said, campus ministry is focused on “trying to deliver to people the things that we want to fill them with, [like]our preset agendas,” rather than recognizing the things that are distinctive in some young men’s lives—whether they are queer, black, atheistic, or from an interfaith background.

“We’re missing the richness of people’s lives,” he said. “We’re missing the insights and the wisdom for today’s spiritual age, which is wrapped up in the lives of young people who are already navigating a lot of challenging issues that previous generations didn’t deal with.”

Having recently been promoted to vice president for mission integration at Mercyhurst, Baker, a father of four, said he is looking forward to putting the lessons he learned about student engagement into practice in his own ministry.

“Part of what campus ministry should be able to do is serve all students regardless of their faith tradition,” he said. “I’m not here to bring my truth to students. I’m here to help them uncover their own truth. I want to make myself present to their stories and the theology and spirituality already at work in their lives.”

“Everybody thought it was so wonderful, but I knew I didn’t want my life to be about rice pudding,” said the Fordham graduate student. “I felt a calling, but I wasn’t sure where the call was leading me. So I figured I should study theology.”

So Corona sold off the kitchen equipment and started taking courses toward a bachelor’s in theology. It set her on an introspective journey that was, on reflection, a path toward becoming holy.

And then her youngest daughter became addicted to heroin.

“I couldn’t think to study anymore,” she said. “But I didn’t want to drop out.”

Her daughter’s addiction changed the way Corona viewed spirituality and her role in the church. She transferred to get a bachelor’s in studio art as a part of a spiritual journey that helped her cope with her daughter’s illness. “It helped me stay in school, and graduate,” she said.

After obtaining a master’s in spirituality online from Loyola University Chicago and an education certification in alcohol and drug counseling, she enrolled in Fordham’s Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education to pursue a doctorate in ministry. She said that her daughter’s addiction shook her out of an “inwardly focused” spirituality and brought her into the congregation to help others facing down the opioid crisis.

Today, Corona is a certified recovery specialist helping communities to take action, often through reaching out to church laity. She said she doesn’t necessarily blame the institutional church for not addressing the crisis. Indeed, she noted that the Vatican held a conference on the problem of addiction in November 2016. She also hailed the recovery work of many priests and nuns on the issue.

But her focus has been on her fellow parishioners.

Tapping Lay Expertise

“When we’re in the midst of a deadly epidemic and people with addictions are suffering tremendously, and they can’t even turn to the person next to them in the pew because they’re ashamed, then there’s something really wrong with our Christian identity,” she said.

In part, Corona feels that the reluctance of many parishioners to feel available to those in need is due to an inherent deference to the clergy—even when they may have a lay expert in their midst. But first and foremost, she’s set out to battle the stigma of addiction.

She also said that the stigma of addiction often prevents parishes from incorporating programs that relate recovery to church spirituality. In response, she began to offer a four week series that examines addiction through a “bio-psycho-social-spiritual model.” At several Philadelphia-area parishes and retreat centers, once a week, she focuses on a specific aspect of addiction—from biology to psychology to sociology to spirituality. She said that she also developed a community action follow-up workshop this past summer at Fordham in an ecclesiology class.

“I want people to understand that we need to become afire with the spirit,” she said. “Because of my experience with my daughter, I know what people using drugs need. And it’s things that ordinary people can do: Just be there, drive someone, cook a meal, or make some phone calls.”

She hopes that the community action workshop will empower small communities of volunteers in each parish to think about what they can to do address what is a national crisis. And in the process, they can begin to reposition the role of the layperson.

While the opioid crisis has brought Corona to focus on the role of congregants, she said her ideas have theological underpinnings that go back to Vatican II. She cited the Apostalicam Actuositatem (Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity) as paving the way for lay people like herself to “act directly and in a definitive way in the temporal sphere.”

“There are some wonderful priests and sisters who have called me in to talk about the crisis and what we can do as a community, [and]I always say if I had a priest on the ticket I’d be a lot more popular,” she said.

Ministry Over Theology

Despite several priests and professors saying she had a knack for theology, Corona veered toward studying ministry largely because of her activist leanings.

“Theology is just a little too much talk and I’m more about action, so of course I’m drawn to ministry and the Jesuits,” she said.

At first, she was also dubious about online education. But after getting her online Loyola master’s, she said she was hooked.

“I’m very serious about education and I always thought you have to be there and interact, but if you have a school that’s putting out good material with good professors giving you good readings, then that’s what it’s all about.”

She refers to addiction as a “family disease” that affects everyone close to the addicted person—“even those not ingesting substances.” It was in such moments that she said she recognized the role of spirituality and the potential of her fellow parishioners.

“Sometimes I stand in church and I want to say ‘I need you people,’” she said. “I need you to be there, and we need this to be the community we’re supposed to be.”

In 2007, after having walked the route several times, Richard Gyug, Ph.D., professor of history and medieval studies, decided to turn the pilgrimage experience itself into a means of study. He created a course titled Study Tour: Medieval Spain, which is offered through the Center for Medieval Studies.

Now, after 23 years of service to Fordham, Gyug is retiring, but not before his seventh and final pilgrimage with Fordham students along the Camino.

Having set out from Leon, Spain, on May 26, the group will walk the last 200 miles of the route, which has been traversed by pilgrims since the 10^th century. Trekking around 15 miles a day, they will reach Santiago on June 8.

In using the Camino as a living classroom, Gyug has been motivated by questions about the medieval experience.

“In doing something that people have done for a thousand years, do we understand the people of that time better?” he asked. “How much does the actual physical activity create in us a similar response?”

Stripped Down to the Essentials

The Camino is both a historical and modern phenomenon, said Gyug. For his students, it can be a rite of passage out of their daily routine, where life is stripped down to the essentials one can fit into a backpack.

“The students step across a threshold into a world with different rules. They walk for two weeks in a community, and then they make a transition back to the next stage of their lives,” he said.

As part of their journey, the students work in teams to examine different thematic topics, for instance, studying spirituality along the route, the infrastructure of the Camino itself, flora and fauna, or vernacular architecture.

They also write daily entries on the Fordham Camino blog to record their reflections on what they observe.

Over the years, Gyug has had many memorable experiences, from the elation of arriving in Santiago, to the more challenging moments of the demanding journey.

“For me it’s always a pleasure to see the student’s growth and development,” he said. “But it’s bittersweet, too, because some of them struggle.

Out of this struggle, however, Gyug has observed students make important insights about themselves and about life, often expressed in the reflections they submit afterwards.

“I remember one student writing that she couldn’t impose her will on the Camino. She’s not going to be able to shape it—it shaped her. That was very striking,” he said.

For Gyug, the emphasis on reflection that the Camino course offers fits well with Fordham’s mission and Ignatian tradition.

“The students are thinking about community within the group of students, and with others walking. It deepens self-awareness and awareness of others,” he said.

Though this is the last trip Gyug will take with students, he said he will definitely walk the Camino again. At Fordham, David Myers, Ph.D., professor of history, who has taught the class the last two years and is co-teaching it with Gyug this year, will continue the Study Tour in future years.

–Nina Heidig

On the heels of Abounding in Kindness: Writings for the People of God (Orbis Books, 2015), comes Johnson’s new book, The Strength of Her Witness: Jesus Christ in the Global Voices of Women (Orbis Books, 2016), an anthology of essays by women theologians.

“The 25 authors in this book speak out boldly about the significance of Jesus, but from very different perspectives,” said Johnson, Distinguished Professor of Theology. “The point brought to the fore is that women in different cultures have their own faith experiences, and when Jesus is seen with the female gaze, powerful new insights break forth.”

While Johnson has long called for a greater inclusion of women’s voices in theological discourse, the book was inspired by pragmatic reasons, as well.

“When teaching courses on ‘Christ in World Cultures,’ I became frustrated by the fact that the good standard books were written almost exclusively by men scholars,” she said. “Using the library reserve system I was forever supplementing these materials with essays written by women in various countries.”

The title of the book is an allusion to chapter four of John’s gospel, which tells the story of the Samaritan woman at the well. In the story, the woman has a lengthy conversation with Jesus and is moved so deeply that she leaves her jug at the well and returns to town to tell everyone about her encounter. Her testimony leads many people to believe that Jesus is the messiah.

Like the Samaritan woman, the authors featured in The Strength of Her Witness testify to the significance of Jesus, Johnson said, offering diverse perspectives on critical contemporary issues, such as racism, sexism, poverty, and the exclusion of LGBT persons.

The authors have clear recommendations for these issues: amidst racism, Christ’s message includes a “profound endorsement” of black women’s human dignity; amidst sexism, Christ’s first appearance to Mary Magdalene and his instruction to “Go and tell” provides grounds for women’s public leadership today; amidst poverty, working for justice provides a liberating force.

“The authors in this book signal the dawn of a new historical era,” Johnson said. “Their work, by turn challenging, comforting, and creative, makes clear the rich contributions that flow when women are empowered, both personally and structurally. It also demonstrates how much poorer church and society remain when only one gender speaks and decides.”

In addition to prioritizing women’s voices, the book is intentional in its inclusion of authors from around the world, Johnson said. This geographic diversity illustrates that the significance of Christ is not limited to American theology or to the Western world, but arises in and belongs to all cultures and nations.

“To bring women’s voices into a long-standing male conversation is one important effort of this book. To emphasize different cultural circumstances adds even more complexity,” she said.

Both the content of the book and its editorial arrangement have a clear implication: The message, though delivered by women, is meant for all people.

“The Samaritan woman of this book’s title did not address her words to women only, but to the whole town… women and men alike,” Johnson said. “Everyone can benefit from listening to wisdom, whatever the source. The riches in this book are not for women only, but for all who seek to immerse themselves more deeply into the meaning of Jesus Christ.”

There’s a constant cacophony bounding from a trio of iPods inside Tom Beaudoin’s home.

His 10-year-old daughter prefers the pop of Katy Perry, Lady Gaga and Fifth Harmony. His wife, a psychotherapist, is fond of show tunes. “And I’m playing Kiss,” said Beaudoin, an associate professor of theology in the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education.

It’s been that way for him since adolescence: That hard rock band’s maiden effort was the first record he ever owned.

But it was hearing the Canadian band Rush’s bassist, Geddy Lee, on the radio that forever transformed him.

“It summoned me, and 35 years later, it’s still happening,” he said of Lee’s distinctively intense lead playing. “I felt I was learning how to live through music.”

Beaudoin, among whose main research interests is the intersection of theology and popular music, has been playing bass in rock ‘n’ roll bands since he was 16.

“There’s some kind of nourishment and energizing and truth that’s coming through the bass in a way that’s true of no other instrument for me,” he said in a Midtown bar on a recent Friday, before heading off to see U2 at Madison Square Garden.

Beaudoin has been the bassist in the band The Raina for about four years, gigging in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Beaudoin’s hometown of Hastings-on-Hudson.

For him, playing rock ‘n’ roll, particularly within an ensemble that’s cultivated a near-instinctive understanding, can approach the transcendent.

“The creative vulnerability and energy and the solidarity about this kind of communal surrender to the music is still extraordinary and I’m still completely moved and compelled by that,” he said.

The Raina, while nominally a jam band, also plays propulsive, guitar-driven, straight-ahead rock ‘n’ roll. And although bass players’ main responsibilities are to provide the rhythmic backbone, Beaudoin’s instrument pours into the foreground.

With splayed hand fingers plunking at the strings of his 1974 Fender Jazz bass–similar to his rock idol Lee’s favored instrument–Beaudoin generates, in his word, a “growly” tone.

“The bass can be percussive but it’s also percussive in a note-rich way. You can do that, sit kind of lovingly under everything, or you can do that in a way that’s propelling things forward and opening out,” he said.

For a long time, Beaudoin did not talk about his identity as a rocker within the academy, and his bandmates heard little about his university life.

“I didn’t mix them up,” he said of his avocations. He fully unveiled his rock ‘n’ roll cloak within academia about the  same time he kick-started his “Rock and Theology” blog in 2009.

His reticence to merge the two, though, can still prevail.

“In some ways, each world saves me from the other,” he said. “Academic life saves me from what I don’t like about rock ‘n’ roll, and rock ‘n’ roll saves me from what I don’t like about academic life. So I have a motivation to keep them separate.”

Beaudoin, raised in Independence, Missouri, within a progressive Catholic family, said he’s undergone “really deep shifts” in terms of his religious sensibilities. That’s been reflected and distilled in his research on religious “deconversion and disaffiliation.”

Rock ‘n’ roll, though, has been a constant–and powerful–thread. Looking for and discovering ways to mesh those two worlds of rock and theolgy, though, has proved a revelatory journey.

“It’s just surrender to the uncontrollable. But it’s a cultivated surrender, it’s a trained surrender,” Beaudoin said of where religion and music meet for him. “But if I’m going to be one person, then I’d like to find a way to let both of them through, in a way that respects where I am. That’s tricky to do.”

—Rich Khavkine