The National Black Catholic Congress will livestream the final episode in its “Black Catholics and the Millennial Gap” young adults webinar series on Monday, February 7th at 7pm ET, the organization has announced.
Entitled “The Tradition of Black Liturgy & Worship in the Catholic Church”, the event coincides with the first full week of Black History Month and is being dedicated in honor of the late Black Catholic liturgist Kenneth W. Louis—who passed in November 2020 after decades of faithful service to the Church.
Join us for the final episode in the series, "Black Catholics and the Millennial Gap." Airing here, and on the NBCC Facebook page and YouTube channel, beginning at 7:00 PM EST on Monday, February 7. pic.twitter.com/slMGbnU6yF
— The National Black Catholic Congress (@NBCCongress) January 20, 2022
Running since November of last year, the NBCC series features dialogue between a group of Black Catholic scholars pursuing doctorate degrees at various Church-affiliated institutions around the country.
Among them are the series organizer LaRyssa Herrington—a graduate of Emory University’s Candler School of Theology who studies at the University of Notre Dame—and fellow Candler alums Byron Wratee, who now studies at Boston College, and John Barnes II of Fordham University.
Chanelle Robinson, who hosted last month’s episode on ecology, environmental racism, and Laudato Si, is a graduate of the University of Toronto and now studies alongside Wratee at BC.
Barnes, himself a liturgist whose areas of study include Black liberation theology, systematics, and Christology, will host Monday’s event.
The first two episodes in the series covered Catholic racism and Black Lives Matter, respectively, two hot-button topics that are not often discussed in public forums by young people in the Church.
This new initiative from the NBCC was an outworking of a relationship formed between the organization and Herrington, and has now blossomed into a long-term program meant to rejuvenate the Congress with young Black Catholic voices.
As with the previous events in the series, Monday’s will be livestreamed across multiple NBCC platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
Nate Tinner-Williams is co-founder and editor of Black Catholic Messenger, a seminarian with the Josephites, and a ThM student with the Institute for Black Catholic Studies at Xavier University of Louisiana (XULA).
