Diversity & Dialogue
Coming Together as One Community
At STM, a rich variety of voices converge to form one dynamic community grounded in the Jesuit, Catholic values of intensive intellectual dialogue and reverence for all backgrounds and viewpoints.
Our students and faculty range in age from their 20s to their 70s. They’re women and men, single, married, priests, new graduates and career professionals, lay students and vowed religious from all over the world. In fact, international students make up 25 percent of our student body. We’re constantly working to ensure we reflect the rapidly changing demographics of the U.S. Catholic Church and international Church and provide resources that meet the needs of every student.
All of us share a single mission: to develop our academic and ministerial gifts in service to the Church and the world. And we value each student equitably—no matter their race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, immigration status, socioeconomic status, religion, ability, or age.
65%
of students are lay students
54%
of lay students are female
27%
of students are international
“The School of Theology and Ministry prepares pastoral leaders and theological scholars to inspire others to imagine possibility and live with radical hope. We do this through a curriculum that honors a diversity of perspectives about what it means to be in relationship with God, others and the world. We model it through pedagogical commitments that foster serious inquiry and life-giving empowerment. We bring it to life through our research and service.”
Committee on Race and Ethnicity
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The STM Committee on Race and Ethnicity (CORE) is a standing committee of STM faculty, administrative staff, and students. As an advisory committee to the STM dean, it seeks to advance and sustain the STM’s commitment to racial justice and diversity in the academic, spiritual, personal, and pastoral dimensions of STM formation.
CORE led STM in a synodal listening process spanning eighteen months, including both internal and external assessments, which resulted in a Formation for Racial Justice three-year strategic plan, launched in March 2022.
As theologians and ministers, we must name the root causes of racism, grow in our awareness of the ways in which it has affected Christian history, theology, and ministerial practice, fostered white privilege, and harmed people of color. We are called as a community to examine, renew, and advance our commitment to formation for learned ministry in light of the Gospel, the Jesuit tradition, and the mission of the STM.
In service to these goals, the Committee on Race and Ethnicity will seek:
to serve as a venue for voicing concerns about race and ethnicity at STM;
to raise awareness of racial justice and promote equitable practices in all aspects of life at STM;
to provide anti-racism resources for the ongoing formation and development of students, faculty, and staff;
to promote programming around issues of race theory and racial justice (e.g., via conversations, activities, research and writing projects, pedagogies, advocacy actions, conferences, meetings, and discussion groups);
and to encourage encounter and engagement with racially diverse communities through events and activities sponsored by Boston College, STM, and the local area.
CORE Membership 2022-2023:
Jacqueline Regan, Co-chair and Associate Dean, Student Affairs and Career Services.
Felix Palazzi, Co-chair and Associate Professor of the Practice, Director of Formación Continua
Cathy Mooney, Associate Professor of Church History
O. Ernesto Valiente, Associate Professor of Systematic Theology
Anthony Russo, Associate Dean, Graduate Enrollment Management
Karen Smith, Academic Services Specialist
Brenda Noriega, Current Student
Damian Torres-Botello, SJ, Current Student
Tarah Valin, Current Student
Alumni Spotlight
Christian Rodriguez
M.Div. Alumnus
“As an openly gay and openly Catholic Latino studying at the STM and working in Campus Ministry, dialogue has been at the heart of my BC experience. The friendships I have formed at the STM have been sources of support and challenge as I figure out my place as a minister in the Church.”
STM Resources
Racial Justice Blogs
September 15, 2022
January 27, 2022
January 18, 2022
The Spirituals: An African American Music Idiom and Its Relevance to Our Lives Today
Meyer Chambers, campus minister for liturgical arts, Boston College, and Rev. Oscar Pratt, pastor, St. Katharine Drexel Parish, Dorchester, MA
Whether sung liturgically, privately, or performed in concert, the Spirituals are a truly unique American music genre, steeped and founded in the Black Church experience with longevity and relevance for our lives today.
The Fiercy Urgency of Now
M. Shawn Copeland, professor emerita, Boston College Theology Department
Over the 13 years of his public social ministry, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., called our nation to self-reflection and action with regard to three urgent problems—racism, poverty, and war, which remain as urgent today as they did 50 years ago. This address explores King’s exercise of the prophetic and those problems from the vantage of political theology.
Do Black Lives Matter to God?
Amey Victoria Adkins-Jones, assistant professor of theology and African Diaspora studies, Boston College Theology Department
Responses to Covid-19 have only highlighted and exacerbated the racial and socioeconomic divides in this country, and as the contemporary civil rights movement pushes for reform and abolition, declaring yet again that Black lives matter -- where is God? Where is the (c)hurch? Together we reflect on both the questions and theological resources for pursuing community and racial justice.