Margaret Farley RSM, Professor of Christian Ethics, Yale University Divinity School, will deliver the 2009 5th Alan Bray Memorial Lecture on Saturday, 18 April 2009, 14.00, at St. Anne’s Church, 55 Dean Street, Soho, London W1D 6AF. Professor Farley will explore the theme, Sacrament of Desire, in a lecture sponsored by the Roman Catholic Caucus to honour Alan Bray, a founding member and prominent British gay social historian who died in 2001. A response will be given by Terry Prendergast, Chief Executive of Marriage Care.
Margaret Farley will look to a framework for sexual ethics insofar as it may be appropriate for same-sex as well as opposite sex relationships, offering some reflection on the experience of love and desire, and of the ways of grace and sacramentality within them.
Margaret Farley, a Sister of Mercy, has held the Gilbert L. Stark Chair in Christian Ethics at Yale University, USA. A past-president of the Society of Christian Ethics, and ther catholic theological Society of America, she has published over 80 articles on medical and sexual ethics, and 6 books, the latest being: Just Love: A framework for Christian Sexual
Ethics, published by Continuum.
Terry Prendergast is Cheif Executive of Marriage Care, a UK-wide charity, Christian-based, supporting people in the best and worst of times in their marriages and family relationships. He is a respected speaker and writer on marriage an human relationships, and a frequent contributor to the Roman Catholic weekly review, The Tablet.
Alan Bray was one of the foremost social historians of his time. he died in 2001, just one year before his final work, The Friend, was published by the University of Chicago Press. As with his Homosexuality in Renaissance England, Bray challenged the prevailing silence of social and religious institutions as they sought to bury the historical and spiritual relaities of lesbian and gay people. A founder-member of the Lesbian & Gay Christian Movement, and its Roman Cathoic Caucus, he was received into full communion with the Roman Catholic Church in 1985. One of his obituaries referred to him as: A groundbreaking historian whose first book created a new field for an entire generation of literary critics, historians, and gay activists. A second book, The Friend, seems likely to do the same 20 years on.
The Alan Bray Memorial Lecture, sponsored by the Roman Catholic Caucus of the Lesbian & Gay Christian Movement, seeks to explore the historical, social, political, and theological questions raised by Bray’s commitments. Previous speakers include: Professors Elizabeth Stuart, Mark Jordan, Conor Gearty, Robert Wintemute, Gerard Loughlin, with Aidan O’Neill QC and Dr. Julie Clague.
Further information: www.rccaucuslgcm.co.uk or e-mail lgcm_rccaucus@hotmail.com
info@rccaucuslgcm.co.uk
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