To Be the Body of Christ: Discipleship (Solidarity) and Eucharist

In this presentation, I explore the relation between discipleship as solidarity and Eucharist. To this end, the Gospel of Luke sets the scriptural parameters, as the story of the disciples on the way to Emmaus and their experience of recognizing Jesus at table in the breaking of bread is narrated only in this Gospel. Written in the final decades of the first century and addressed to a community of mixed social and economic standing, Luke’s narrative has come under critique for its tendency to convey double-messages and its ambiguity toward women and the poor. New Testament scholar Sharon Ringe has argued that Luke “pulled his punches:” Luke speaks about the poor, but he speaks to the rich; he emphasizes charity, but seems not to advocate change in repressive political and economic arrangements. We too live in a powerful nation of increasingly deep and wide social and economic disparities and divisions. This gospel raises as many questions for us as it seeks to answer: How are we to live if we call ourselves disciples of Jesus? Do we speak truth to power or pull our punches? What does it mean for us to be the body of Christ

The Role of the Black Catholic Theologian and Scholar in Today’s Context

Based on her keynote address delivered during the 2009 Annual Meeting at Atlanta University’s Lyke Center, Copeland takes a look back at the nearly forty-year history of black theological scholarship, reminding us of the intimate link between culture, history, and the ongoing and critical need for a theology that is authentic and responsive to the needs of the poor and marginalized. She reminds us of the urgency for the pursuit of truth and freedom, especially for black scholars and theologians. However, the quest for authenticity comes with a price

Delivered Remarks on Reception of the John Courtney Murray Award

The urgent challenge for us as Catholic theologians, scholars, and teachers remains the same as it was 45 years ago—the recruitment and training of black Catholic scholars for theological studies. We must “seize” leadership in this endeavor for the good of our country, for the good of our church, and for the greater honor and glory of God

To Be the Body of Christ: Discipleship (Solidarity) and Eucharist

In this presentation, I explore the relation between discipleship as solidarity and Eucharist. To this end, the Gospel of Luke sets the scriptural parameters, as the story of the disciples on the way to Emmaus and their experience of recognizing Jesus at table in the breaking of bread is narrated only in this Gospel. Written in the final decades of the first century and addressed to a community of mixed social and economic standing, Luke’s narrative has come under critique for its tendency to convey double-messages and its ambiguity toward women and the poor. New Testament scholar Sharon Ringe has argued that Luke “pulled his punches:” Luke speaks about the poor, but he speaks to the rich; he emphasizes charity, but seems not to advocate change in repressive political and economic arrangements. We too live in a powerful nation of increasingly deep and wide social and economic disparities and divisions. This gospel raises as many questions for us as it seeks to answer: How are we to live if we call ourselves disciples of Jesus? Do we speak truth to power or pull our punches? What does it mean for us to be the body of Christ

The Risk of Memory, The Cost of Forgetting

This article, a revision of the Raymund Schwager, S.J., Memorial Lecture, given at the Colloquium on Religion and Violence, July 10, 2015, St. Louis University, focuses on the risk of memory and the cost of forgetting. Memory, and the act of remembering both individually and collectively as a society, involves risk to a society’s present, past, and future. Forgetting comes at a price exacted by the past, but paid in the present for the future, even as nations sometimes choose to forget. This thesis is developed in three parts – common meaning and memory as grounding a community; the cost of forgetting so as to erase memory of wrongdoing; and the terrible implications of the cost of forgetting in the context of the shooting at Mother Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church on June 17, 2015 in South Carolina. When we risk memory, we collectively take responsibility to embody ethical responsibility for the past, in the present, and for the future

The NASA Langley Mars Tumbleweed Rover Prototype

Mars Tumbleweed is a concept for an autonomous rover that would achieve mobility through use of the natural winds on Mars. The wind-blown nature of this vehicle make it an ideal platform for conducting random surveys of the surface, scouting for signs of past or present life as well as examining the potential habitability of sites for future human exploration. NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) has been studying the dynamics, aerodynamics, and mission concepts of Tumbleweed rovers and has recently developed a prototype Mars Tumbleweed Rover for demonstrating mission concepts and science measurement techniques. This paper will provide an overview of the prototype design, instrumentation to be accommodated, preliminary test results, and plans for future development and testing of the vehicle

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead