Duc in Altum | Sept 17 2024
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Put Out into the Deep
Sept 17 2024
Hello, and welcome to the inaugural edition of Put Out into the Deep, the newsletter of Building Catholic Futures! Last week we were thrilled to launch publicly, with a website where you can get to know our principles, our mission, and our programs. This newsletter is where we’ll give updates on our work equipping Catholic institutions to serve and share the Gospel with gay people and offer opportunities to get to know our people and projects better.
If there are particular projects or resources from the website that you want to know more about, you can send us a quick note via the Contact Us page at BuildingCatholic.org. And if you received this from a friend, and are not yet a subscriber, click Building Catholic Futures and fill out the Keep In Touch form to receive future updates.
Shine a Light:
Eve at "Where Peter Is"
Eve writes about why Building Catholic Futures focuses on equipping the people who accompany and mentor LGBT+ people:
[E]ven the many people in the Church who truly want to serve gay people well have no models for what it looks like when an openly gay person flourishes in the practice of our faith. Many well-intentioned Catholics either stay silent, out of fear of doing harm, or say something that’s awkward and unhelpful at best, painful and discouraging at worst. And who can blame them? Nobody told them what it might mean to be both gay and Catholic—to accept oneself and follow Christ in His Church. Nobody showed them what it might look like for queer people to be called to missionary discipleship.
To Hear the Beating
of Jesus’ Heart
Our logo was designed by our friend Jamez Murck, with help from Gracie Morbitzer. (Gracie also illustrated scenes from the New Testament for our Journeys curriculum, and created the first set of posters in our classroom poster series—but we’ll be telling you more about those projects later!) The logo depicts an eagle nestled against a staff, held within a heart.
This image comes from a vision of St Gertrude the Great. On December 28, the feast of St John the Beloved, Gertrude had a vision in which John raised her up to lie beside him against the breast of Jesus. Feeling the beating of the Sacred Heart, Gertrude asked John if he had felt Jesus’ Heartbeat when he rested on the breast of his Lord at the Last Supper, and John, overflowing with ardent love, expressed the ecstasy he had experienced in that moment when he encountered the Word made Flesh.
The eagle is John’s symbol, the staff a symbol of Gertrude’s monastic vocation (though she was never an abbess!). The Heart is Christ’s. Two virgins unite in their love for the Virgin Jesus; two vocations, to be a nun and to be an apostle, unite in following Jesus the Way; a man and a woman unite in something even deeper than marriage—our eternal destiny of communion with our Lord.
How could we pick anything else to represent our work?
Thank You!
We want to thank you all for subscribing and supporting our mission. If you know anyone who should hear about our mission, please share the website and ask others to Keep In Touch. Keep us in prayer and let us know how we can pray for you.
Duc in altum! Put out into the deep!
Eve and Keith
