We Are Church: Zoom presentations on 2nd April and 9th April with Tina Beattie
Upcoming Events in We Are Church Ireland
Tina Beattie (Talks: Wed. April 2nd and 9th 2025)
After many years as Professor of Catholic Studies at the University of Roehampton in London, Tina Beattie now works as an independent researcher and writer, publishing extensively on sacramentality, desire, embodiment and gender, as well as working with academic and educational groups and projects to promote the role of women in church and society.
This includes offering in-person and online courses in leadership, pastoral formation and theology for women religious in sub-Saharan Africa, in her capacity of being president of the Sophia Institute based in Namibia In addition to numerous journal articles and book chapters, she has been published to high acclaim many times, including The New Atheists: The Twilight of Reason and the War on Religion (DLT 2008); New Catholic Feminism: Theology and Theory (Routledge, 2006); God’s Mother, Eve’s Advocate: A Marian Narrative of Women’s Salvation (Continuum, 2002).
In addition to her academic publications, Tina is a published novelist and a regular contributor to the media, including BBC Radio 4’s “Thought for the Day”.
Tina has spent much of her life in sub-Saharan Africa (Zambia, Kenya and Zimbabwe), and is now in the process of relocating from the south coast of England to Stirling in Scotland with her husband Dave. They have four adult children and five grandchildren
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TITLE Sacramentality, Sex, and Society: Reflections on the Catholic understanding of marriage and sexuality in its historical development and its contemporary expressions.
Session One: “Sacramentality, Sex and Society: Historical Perspectives”
How has the Catholic understanding of sexuality and marriage developed, and how can we evaluate the significance of this tradition in its sacramental, ethical and social forms of expression? Tina considers aspects of the history of marriage and its relationship to sexuality, sacramentality and spirituality. She asks how Catholicism has cultivated complex attitudes to sexual desire and bodily pleasure, in the context of an approach that has often been prohibitive and destructive, but that has also been mindful of the potentially violent and abusive aspects of sexual desire. To what extent does this long tradition offer wisdom and insight for us today, and what are the negative aspects that invite re-evaluation and either rejection or reformation?
Session Two:“Sacramentality, Sex and Society: Contemporary Perspectives”
The early 21st century is seeing unprecedented challenges to long-held beliefs about sexuality, gender and marriage. Tina draws on insights from feminism, gender theory and modern theology to explore the challenges contemporary culture poses to Christian sexual ethics and ideas about marriage, and she asks how we might explore pathways towards a healthy and life-giving sexual ethos, with a realistic acknowledgement of the violent and abusive aspects of human sexual desire and behaviour, as well as its potential to express joy, love and delight in the bodily other.
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