Month: April 2019

It’s nearly May. It’s gorgeous outside…and for once we just need to laugh and be joyous! Here is something you may have seen before, but it always makes me laugh out loud. It’s originally from Dr. David M. Scholer, a former professor at Fuller Theological Seminary. 10 Reasons Why Men Shouldn’t Be Ordained 10. A…
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Nothing, based on our experience Thursday as guests in a class for a course called “Catholic Philadelphia: Then and Now.” Maureen Tate of the Grail and SEPA WOC and I were asked to speak on the local woman priest movement by a woman professor in this area school run by a men’s religious order. Every…
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How broken is your heart? Mine certainly is. I’m speaking, of course, about the burning of the central part of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. As probably many of you, I loved the Cathedral: its position in the center of that most exquisite city; its romantic presence and Gothic majesty; and, yes, the tribute I…
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Perhaps you’ve heard that Joseph Ratzinger (formerly known as Pope Benedict XVI) published a letter last week about the causes of sex abuse and other problems in the church. He does not once mention the evils of feminism! He makes glancing references to women, like the danger when a “girlfriend” of a lay pastoral worker,…
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THIS IS HOW THE LIGHT GETS IN!HOLY THURSDAY WITNESSAPRIL 18, 2019 at 11:00AM Sister Cities Park, 18th & JFK Parkway(Across from Sts. Peter & Paul Basilica)Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Remember that song from the Sixties, “Stop, in the name of Love!”? Don’t you sometimes want to sing it, shout it, pray it, from the rafters of your…
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Is “a difficult woman” a cliché? It’s been used in an Australian television series and a biography of Lillian Hellman, not to mention a book by Roxane Gay and an anthology about twenty-nine contemporary women. Would Lucetta Scaraffia be an Italian version? Having written about her resignation letter and now having read several articles published…
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Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for your thoughtful and thought-provoking responses to my March 26 blog post quandary over the choice for the theme for our annual Holy Thursday Witness for the Ordination of Women across from the Basilica of Saints Peter & Paul in Philadelphia (at 9am if you care to join us…
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“Blasted” is how Nicole Winfield of the Associated Press characterizes the response of the Women’s Ordination Conference to Pope Francis’s new apostolic exhortation, “Christus Vivit.” Winfield does not quote WOC’s best blast: that the Pope is “suggesting no concrete actions to further his own bishops’ call for the inclusion of women in decision-making and leadership…
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Last year, I was asked to write a poem for Women’s History Month to be read at Mass, and the priest actually let me read this!  As we close out March and begin April, that month of rebirth, I offer you this:  A Church for Our Daughters Would it be stone-clad?With some rocks left overFor…
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