Class of 1996 Profile: Sheila McCarthy

As part of the celebration of the 15th anniversary of the YTI Class of 1996, YTI alumni are interviewing each other, discovering and recording what is happening in the lives of our YTI family today. If you are a member of the class of 1996, and would like to participate in this project, contact Sara Toering at sjtoering@gmail.com

Sheila is interviewed here by Rebecca Rich:

Since YTI, Sheila has spent lots of time in South Bend, Indiana. After graduating from high school, Sheila attended Notre Dame, where she studied theology and started a chapter of Pax Christi, a Catholic peace group. (She remembers her first visit to Notre Dame well because it included a delightful weekend with fellow YTI ‘96ers Sara Toering, Becca Rich, and Christian Petersen at a lake house in western Michigan.) After graduating from Notre Dame, Sheila lived in several Catholic Worker communities—in Los Angeles, New York City, and upstate New York. She then completed an M.T.S. at Duke before returning to Notre Dame where she is currently working on a Ph.D. in Theology in the area of Liturgical Studies. Her dissertation is titled “Healing the Body of Christ: Liturgy, Trauma, and the Works of Mercy.” She is a member of the St. Peter Claver Catholic Worker community in South Bend, teaches yoga, and goes to daily mass.

Sheila reports that YTI changed just about everything for her and that the rest of her life since YTI has been an attempt to recapture, and in fact go beyond, the community she experienced there. For example, her interest in the Catholic Worker movement grew out of her YTI experience of living simply and close to the land, with the poor in a faith community. Sheila says that YTI made her want to study theology instead of medicine, made her interested in living in community, made her connect environmental issues to poverty issues, began a life long interest in Buddhism, and made her glad to be Catholic. Even today, Sheila meets people that she wishes would have gone to YTI because they could have used it—or, because YTI could have used them. Sheila believes that one of the great gifts of YTI is that it treats teenagers like people who have a contribution to make, and she found that to be empowering.

Sheila is currently grappling with a variety of questions. In her dissertation, for example, Sheila is exploring how movement, not just words, can be healing of trauma. She also thinks about community a lot, and about fallibility and brokenness in the context of living in community. Sheila has lately been amazed by God’s love in the world.