Trans Life and the Catholic Church Today: Book Launch

Join us for the launch of Nicolete Burbach and Lisa Sowle Cahil’s edited collection, Trans Life and the Catholic Church Today (Bloomsbury), featuring refreshments and a panel of contributors.

The past few years have seen an upsurge in the public consciousness of trans lives. This has brought opportunities to learn from groups and cultures that have formerly been silenced within our societies, to reflect upon the insights arising amidst the unusual experiences of trans life, and to recognize and address forms of injustice to which the majority of people have long been blind.

Yet it has also brought challenges. For trans people, this is the challenge of increased public scrutiny, including various reactions against their new position in society. For wider society and groups within it, this has been the challenge of including trans people in a culture built around the presuppositions which trans people disrupt. The Church has felt this particularly keenly, with these kinds of questions being central to many of the ambivalences in its relationship with the modern world.

This volume considers the various questions to do with trans people in the life of the Church from an interdisciplinary, Catholic, ecumenical perspective, reaching out to academics, clergy and educated lay readers. It brings together perspectives from a variety of disciplines to provide a rigorous, wide-ranging engagement with these pressing issues. It also includes a number of trans contributors, crucially making their voices present in these discussions.

Dr Nicolete Burbach is Social and Environmental Justice Lead at the London Jesuit Centre. Prof Lisa Sowle Cahil is J. Donald Monan Professor at Boston College.

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