3:45 – 5:15 pm | Accompaniment: Walking in the Light of God to Stop the Cycle of Prejudice and Oppression

3:45 pm – 5:15 pm
Narita AB

Although Dr. Daniels-Sykes’ research and writings promote the idea of accompaniment in respect to a Lay Ministry Ally in the health care setting, her workshop seeks to expand this idea to other social institutions and structures where, she argues, accompaniment is needed. Drawing on principles of social justice via the context of Catholic Social Teaching, the speaker proposes that a Lay Ministry Ally, when engaged mutually with another(s), that the ally can play a significant role while walking with another to address social institutions that are consciously or unconsciously biased and perpetuate the cycle or prejudice and oppression.

Dr. Shawnee Daniels-Sykes

A native of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Dr. Shawnee Marie Daniels-Sykes is currently the only African American/Black Catholic female theological bioethicist in the nation. Having earned her Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Marquette University, Milwaukee, she is in her eleventh year at Mount Mary University where she is an Associate Professor in the Department of Theology. A past chair of the Faculty Assembly there, Dr. Daniels-Sykes teaches courses in Catholic social teaching, Catholic moral theology and in particular bioethics and social ethics, liberation theologies, a Christian faith perspective on human sexuality, among others.

She holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Biology and Biochemistry from Spelman College, Atlanta, Georgia, a Bachelor of Science Degree in Nursing from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and a Master’s Degree in Pastoral Studies/Theology from Saint Francis Seminary in Saint Francis, Wisconsin.

Dr. Daniels-Sykes is a Registered Nurse by training having worked in labor and delivery and public health care. An adjunct Associate Professor at the Institute for Black Catholic Studies in the Graduate Division, at Xavier University of Louisiana where she teaches a course entitled Moral Questions in the Black Community, she is also a volunteer faculty member at the Medical College of Wisconsin/Children’s Hospital for the Center for the Advancement of Undeserved Children. She also teaches in the Institute for Catholic Lay Life at Cardinal Stritch University in Milwaukee.

As a community member, she serves on the Quality Assurance Committee for the Board of Directors for the AIDS Resource Center of Wisconsin. As a Catholic moralist, her current research interests involve the investigation of makeshift death shrines/memorials that are erected after gun violent homicides in the city of Milwaukee and beyond, health care ethics, and current moral issues, such as race, class and gender inequities/disparities in church and society.

Dr. Daniels-Sykes has published book chapters, book reviews, and journal articles in peer reviewed journals, and edited books. She has given television and radio interviews on her research on those makeshift death shrines; there are several newspaper articles on her death shrines’ research too.

Dr. Daniels-Sykes is a national and international keynote speaker and workshop presenter on topics related to theological social bioethics across the human life spectrum: beginning of life, middle of life, and end of life. She has been an active member for many years with the Catholic Theological Society of America. She is the past chair the Professional Conduct Committee for the Society of Christian Ethics and the past secretary and chair of the membership committee for the Black Catholic Theological Symposium.

Having won numerous awards for service in the Catholic Church and in society, Dr. Daniels-Sykes currently chairs the steering committee for the writing of the Black Catholic Pastoral Plan in conjunction with Archbishop Jerome Listecki of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee.