Annie Selak, "The Wounded Church: Tending to the Harm within Catholicism" (Fordham UP, 2026)

June 7, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

When Dr. Annie Selak moved to Washington, D.C., with a three-month-old baby, she did what many Catholics do in a new city: she went looking for a parish. What she found, week after week, was a cold silence. People walked in, sat through Mass, and left. No one offered a smile at the baby. No one mentioned the sex abuse scandal that was then dominating local headlines. “I wanted a community,” she says. Instead, she got a transaction. That experience became the seed of her new book, The Wounded Church: Tending to the Harm Within Catholicism (Fordham UP, 2026). Selak, a feminist theologian with over fifteen years in Catholic ministry, argues that the church cannot be credible — cannot truly be church — unless it stops pretending its wounds do not exist.

Why "Wounds" and Not "Healing"

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What you'll learn

1 (02:12) **Guest Introduction and Origin of the Project** - Dr. Annie Selak introduces herself as a Catholic feminist theologian and explains how her experience of being a woman in the church drove her research.
2 (04:48) **The Search for a Spiritual Home** - Selak recounts moving to Washington, D.C. with a baby and finding a cold, impersonal church environment that revealed deeper wounds.
3 (12:56) **Central Argument of "The Wounded Church"** - The church must attend to its wounds in order to credibly and authentically be the church.
4 (16:21) **Sexism as a Wound** - Selak examines sexism beyond women's ordination, looking at how gendered assumptions pervade everyday church life.
5 (20:24) **Racism as a Wound** - Selak traces the history of Black exclusion from priesthood and religious life, and critiques the church's relative silence on contemporary racism.
6 (23:21) **Clericalism as a Wound** - Clericalism is the uniquely internal church wound of treating priests as set apart and better than others.
7 (29:52) **Wrestling with Staying in the Church** - Selak reflects on her ongoing struggle with whether to remain Catholic after researching clericalism.

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Show Notes

Dr. Annie Selak (she/her/hers) is an expert in feminist ecclesiology. She studies wounds in the church, or moments where the church fails to live into its mission and causes harm. Racism, sexism, and the clergy sex abuse crisis are examples of the church failing to credibly be church. Guided by a feminist methodology, Selak integrates the lived experience of women with a robust vision for the church. Selak serves as a Visiting Scholar in the Center on Faith and Justice while working as a campus minister at a local independent school. She earned her Ph.D. in systematic theology at Boston College and M.Div at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley. Selak has over 15 years of experience in Catholic ministry, and her writing has appeared in Modern Theology, Journal of Catholic Social Thought, Washington Post, National Catholic Reporter, Commonweal, and America.

Her forthcoming book, The Wounded Church: Tending to the Harm within Catholicism (Fordham UP, 2026) puts forth a vision of the church in the shadow of wounds, guided by a feminist methodology. Selak argues that the Catholic Church must confront its own injuries in order to credibly be Church. Using a feminist framework, she develops a new ecclesiology around three wounds, racism, sexism, and clericalism, that actively harm the Body of Christ and distort its witness.

Attentive to history, pastoral practice, and lived experience, Selak shows how each wound is both inflicted by the Church and borne within the Church. She offers the resurrected body of Jesus, scarred yet no longer bleeding, as a guiding metaphor for ecclesial renewal, a body that does not deny its wounds but is transformed through them. Drawing on Karl Rahner, she grounds hope in the reign of God while insisting on concrete institutional and spiritual conversion.

Written for students and scholars, ministers and lay leaders, The Wounded Church uncovers overlooked histories tied to racism, sexism, and the clergy sexual abuse crisis, and proposes clear theological principles for reform. The result is a constructive, pastorally engaged vision that tells the truth about harm and imagines credible paths toward change, accountability, and justice.

You can use the code “church2026” at the link here to receive a discounted book and free shipping.

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