AFTER COPERNICUS AND DARWIN CAME STONEWALL

Like the Copernican revolution in the 16th century and the Darwinian revolution in the 19th, which represented radical upheavals in traditional understanding of the realities of the human and natural worlds, so too did the Stonewall Uprising of 1969. Stonewall initiated a long, massive, unprecedented re-examining of the phenomenon of homosexuality on multiple fronts -- legal, biological, psychological sociological, forensic, etc. -- that fundamentally challenged all existing "received wisdom," including theological. Fifty years after Stonewall, what has been the result of all these new data, new insights, and new direct, personal testimonies of the lived experiences of gay people?  More specifically, how has the Catholic Church's traditional judgement on homosexuality fared in the long aftermath of the Stonewall “revolution”? Today's Heniz Bluhm Lecture Series presentation will answer that question.

Krzysztof Charamsa is a theologian, philosopher, and bioethicist. After his studies in Poland, Switzerland, and Italy, he worked for many years in the Vatican as Senior Officer of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and Second Secretary of the Theological International Commission. He has also taught at the Pontifical Gregorian University and Regina Apostolorum University in Rome. A free-lance writer and public speaker, he is author of several books and articles on the subject of LGBTIQ+ rights.