Shaming power and privilege - not people with Teresa Delgado, Ph.D.

Preaching for the Fifth Sunday of Lent, Teresa Delgado, Ph.D., redirects our attention toward the systems, powers, and structures that use that use vulnerable people for their own benefit:    "How is it scandalous to say that Jesus enacts no punishment, no condemnation, for an 'adulterous' woman, that he just lets her go; yet not scandalous that the religious power structures of the time could have accused an innocent person, condemning her to death, just to prove a point?What responsibility do we have in undoing the systems and structures that make it all too easy to drag a vulnerable person to the middle of the square to be stoned for all to see and participate?...As we journey through these final days of Lent, I pray we have not become so desensitized to the harm done by powers and privilege, because we are so much more focused on shaming the 'sinner' rather than dismantling the structures that make such shaming all too easy."   Teresa Delgado is Director of the Peace and Justice Studies Program and Professor and Chairperson of the Religious Studies Department at Iona College (New Rochelle, NY). She received her doctorate from Union Theological Seminary in New York City, under the guidance of the trailblazing womanist theologian Dr. Delores S. Williams. She has published on topics ranging from diversity in higher education, transformational pedagogies, constructive theology and ethics, and justice for racially, ethnically and sexually minoritized persons.   Visit www.catholicwomenpreach.org/preaching/04032022 to learn more about Dr. Delgado, to read her preaching text, and for more preaching from Catholic women.