After a self-described queer Roman Catholic theology professor received an award, he used his speech to bash the Trump administration and commend “gendered and sexual diversity.”
Fr. Bryan Massingale, a priest with the Archdiocese of Milwaukee and a professor at Fordham University, received the John Courtney Murray Award from the Catholic Theological Society of America in June.
In his speech at the award ceremony, which was published on July 14 by the Jesuit site Outreach, Massingale noted that his book “Racial Justice and the Catholic Church” was removed from the U.S. Naval Academy.
“Why? Because that work is in direct opposition to the idolatrous ideology of white so-called ‘Christian’ nationalism that is the heart of the immoral projects being advanced by our nation’s administration,” he proclaimed.
Blaze Media reported that the book had been removed under a crackdown on diversity, equity, and inclusion materials promoted by the federal government.
Novus Ordo priest and professor Fr. Bryan Massingale (in full communion, of course!): “Black flesh is a place of divine encounter, revelation and manifestation” – https://t.co/T8UZeCdmee This is the insanity you get if you follow the logic underlying Liberation Theology and apply…
— Novus Ordo Watch (@NovusOrdoWatch) July 17, 2026
Massingale also decried “Christian nationalism” as an ideology proclaiming “America was willed by God to be a place where the descendants of Europe should flourish under the rule of white, conservative, heterosexual men.”
“And that those who differ from that identity only have that place in our nation’s history, institutions and even physical spaces that they allow.”
He referred to supposed efforts to forbid “the teaching of Black enslavement” and the “LGBTQ social struggle.”
Massingale further claimed that his book was removed from the shelves of the U.S. Naval Academy because “it named idolatry.”
“Our task, for the sake of God’s people, is to risk being banned — to call out, name, protest, criticize and denounce the idolatry of the present in the name of the God of life, who desires abundant shalom for all. For all without exception,” Massingale continued.
“Because God’s vision of the world is one in which all flourish, without exception. As Catholic theologians, we are called to see the world as God does. To dream God’s dream for the world.”
Massingale said he is “frantically trying to finish” another book called “Dreaming While Black: The Poetics of Justice.”
“We dare to dream a different world because if the resurrection of Jesus and the descent of the Spirit mean anything, they mean that reality is not a closed system,” he asserted.
“Unpacking that truth of what God has done is what Catholic theology and ethics would look like if it took the Black Experience, in all its gendered and sexual diversity, seriously as a dialogue partner.”
Massingale noted elsewhere in the speech that in the field of “Catholic queer theology,” there have “always been more or less ‘out’ Catholic LGBTQ theologians.”
“For many reasons — personal, political and ecclesial — they did Catholic theology in what I call ‘the open closet,’ where others could know you are gay as long as there was no public acknowledgment or discussion of that fact,” he noted.
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