The first monograph by Assistant Professor of Catholic Studies Susan Bigelow Reynolds has been published by Fordham University Press. People Get Ready: Ritual, Solidarity, and Lived Ecclesiology in Catholic Roxbury is part of Fordham’s series Catholic Practice in the Americas. In the book, Reynolds explores how the people of St. Mary of the Angels, an underground Catholic parish in Boston, create rituals to build bridges across difference.
Using her six years of ethnographic research within the parish, Reynolds analyzes embodied ritual as a site of radical solidarity in the local church. She looks at documents ranging from letters and oral histories to newspaper articles and archdiocesan documents.
Ultimately, Reynolds argues for a return to Vatican II’s concept of ecclesial solidarity as the primary focus of the local church in today’s era of change and displacement.