USD professors attend conference with the Pope

Advocating for marginalized groups in the faith community

HALEY JACOB / FEATURE EDITOR / THE USD VISTA

Two professors from the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of San Diego attended a conference in Rome this past summer to mark the fifth anniversary of Pope Francis’ “Amoris Laetitia,” a 2016 encyclical document on marriage and family. The event took place at the Pontifical Gregorian University on May 11-14 and featured bishops, priests, theologians and other members of the Catholic Church from 25 different countries. Attendees discussed the document and its implementation over the last five years, including critical questions about how the representation of certain minority groups can improve. 

Professor Aaron Bianco and Dr. Emily Reimer-Barry submitted proposals last fall to earn a spot at the conference. In these proposals, prospective attendees wrote about the issues they hoped to address at the conference. Bianco submitted his proposal on LGBT issues and LGBT families, and Dr. Reimer-Barry’s proposal pertained to women’s issues and the role of women in the Church. Bianco shared that — out of over 600 proposals overall — only 26 were accepted, making it an impressive feat for two professors from USD to attend. 

Bianco had initial hesitation about submitting his proposal, considering LGBT issues are often a controversial topic in the Church. 

However, Bianco knew he wanted to discuss the topic of LGBT issues and especially LGBT members and families in connection to family life in the Church.

“Amoris Laetitia is really about the family and marriage and what’s best for family life,” Bianco said. “Too often when we talk about family in church context, we leave out that LGBT members also are in families and make families of their own.”

For his presentation, Bianco shared the stories of four different people in his life. 

“One was a student currently at USD. One was an older man I met who had been out of the Church forever. One was a transgender woman, and then a married lesbian couple,” Bianco said. “I told all four of their stories, and what the Church means to them, but how they’ve been treated. And I had pictures of them up, so it became real. [The audience] could really feel their stories, and I’m convinced that that’s what caused so many people to be impacted by my talk.”

Bianco felt nervous delivering his speech, especially with the rector of the university, a bishop and a cardinal in attendance. However, his presentation proved impactful when two of them thanked Bianco for sharing the stories. 

“To be very honest, I was somewhat harsh on the hierarchy of the Church that they’re not doing enough,” Bianco said. “I was just very honest in my talk about how the Church can’t welcome on the one hand, and then, on the other hand, take back the welcome. So yes, there was a little bit of ‘uh oh, they’re all in here, and they’re going to be very pissed.’ And actually, two of them did come up to me and said to me, ‘I’m so thankful that you shared these stories for us.’”

Dr. Reimer-Barry’s presentation addressed problems in Amoris Laetitia surrounding women’s issues. 

“Amoris Laetitia has a lot of really positive things to say about family life and things that I think helped move the tradition forward in some important ways,” Dr. Reimer-Barry said. “It talks about the full humanity of women. It talks about how marriage is for life and love. It talks about how true love should never be coerced. You know, true love is mutual and reciprocal. These are all really positive things. But at the same time, there are some aspects of the document that remain problematic. I wanted to point out some of those aspects of the problematic pieces, to name them and problematize them, and also see if other people in the room agree.”

Dr. Reimer-Barry discussed the document’s adherence to gender norms and the issue of perpetuating gender-based inequalities. She believes some aspects of the document presented masculinity and femininity as two, rigid categories, creating a situation of constraint. 

Dr. Reimer-Barry also talked about the dangers and limitations of adhering strictly to patriarchal traditions in the Church when wanting to emphasize relational justice. 

Dr. Reimer-Barry hoped to bring a new perspective to addressing the issue of bodily autonomy and reproductive loss. She quoted global statistics from a United Nations report that found that half of the pregnancies today are pregnancies that girls did not deliberately choose. Dr. Reimer-Barry wanted others to think about how the coercion of sex leads to forced pregnancies in some contexts. Framing that statistic as a human rights issue could provide some common ground or a progressive starting point for talking about the human dignity of women.

“In Amoris Laetitia, Pope Francis talks about how in a healthy marriage, there should be respect, there should be love, there should be equality, there should be a back-and-forth in the relationship: that it should not be a relationship built on domination and submission,” Dr. Reimer-Barry said. “His understanding of marriage would be totally opposed to this reality of pregnancies that women and girls do not deliberately choose. Decision making about reproduction, decision making about sexuality, and a sense of control over how and when to say ‘yes’ in a sexual encounter—those are all things I think the Pope would be in favor of. What I tried to do is say, ‘can we find common ground here? Is this a place where we can build?’”

Dr. Reimer-Barry believes talking about what makes a sexual relationship healthy is a better starting point to combat the divide between the split categories of pro-life and pro-choice. 

“‘How do we create a good sex ed. program?’” Dr. Reimer-Barry said. “‘How do we create healthy relationships? How can we strengthen family life? What are some of the more basic questions for parishes and communities to work on?’ I think Amoris Laetitia does have some good things to say there.”

Bianco and Dr. Reimer-Barry had the opportunity to meet the Pope, and the Pope’s message to Bianco affirmed his work in the Church.

“I said to him, ‘Your Holiness, I work with young adults and LGBT people in the United States, and they’re leaving the Church so often,’” Bianco said. “And he said to me, ‘you need to continue your work with both of those groups, because both of them need to hear how much God loves them.’ So we talked just a little bit more about how I was doing the work. I was so scared walking up, and he made it like you were talking to your grandpa. It’s just the way he grabbed your hand and laughed with you. It made it kind of informal, which made it much easier for me to say what I wanted to say.”

Bianco has hope for the future of the Catholic Church in terms of progressiveness and acceptance, especially after getting the opportunity to speak at the conference. 

“The Vatican has different parts that organize different things in the Church,” Bianco said. “For one of those to be a co-sponsor of an event, and check off that it’s okay for me to come to speak on LGBT issues — that would not have happened ten years ago. Having Francis as the Pope is changing things drastically. The Church moves at a snail’s pace and it always has. Today in society, we don’t move like that, but the Church still somewhat does. These small things that happen — you have to look at those and say, ‘okay, that would not have happened even five years ago, or six years ago, and now it’s happening today.’”

Dr. Reimer-Barry believes the conference is a positive step toward change, mentioning how the networking and information sharing that took place at the conference has the power to inspire important conversations outside the event. 

“It was definitely not a group of people who were there to just repeat the past for the sake of repeating the past,” Dr. Reimer-Barry said. “It was about ‘if there’s something broken we need to fix it, how are we going to fix it? Who should be at the table when we fix it?’”

However, Dr. Reimer-Barry acknowledges that there is still a lot of work to be done in the Church.

“The Church is still such a clerical, male-dominated space,” Dr. Reimer-Barry said. “I think conferences like this lead us in the right direction, but I just feel overwhelmed by how much work we still have to do. The Church is still part of this struggle toward justice in its internal structures, as well as its outward facing.”

Despite the critiques on Amoris Laetitia, the document still has many positive aspects that Bianco and Dr. Reimer-Barry recognize. 

The conference created a space for people of diverse backgrounds to honor the progress of the Church, while allowing conversations about where improvement is still needed. Those fighting to create a more progressive future within the Church generate great optimism for what is to come.