Let Your Voice Be Heard: Conversations on the Margins of the Church

People are moving to the margins of the Catholic Church. As one dialogue partner states, ＂＂I left the Church to beat the rush.＂＂ Yet, another remarks, ＂＂I just wonder. I have to ask, who’s on the margins? I’m not sure.＂＂ Let Your Voice Be Heard details original practical theology research that endeavors to understand the dynamics on the margins of the Roman Catholic Church in dialogue with fifty dialogue partners from across the United States. Practical theology, the theology of marginality of Jung Young Lee, reciprocal ethnography, and the communication theory of Mikhail Bakhtin join in a cross-disciplinary dialogue. In conversation with dialogue partners, Joan Hebert Reisinger seeks the reasons why Catholics over the age of twenty-one who were once active and involved in the Catholic Church find themselves on the margins of the Church and how they understand their own marginality. The dialogue partners speak of new ways of being Church emerging on the margins. This emerging Church is marked by inclusive relationships that include dialogue that does not seek agreement or consensus, a critical and thoughtful recalling of memories and narratives of the Catholic faith tradition, and appropriation of these in new and creative ways.

Joan Hebert Reisinger combines a dual career as both a practical theologian and a speech language pathologist. Her primary research interests are in ecclesiology, particularly the study of those on the margins of the Church, and religious education.