Author: Regina Bannan

Last week I wrote about the possibility of the collapse of the Catholic Church. Now we have two spectacular examples of collapse, tragic collapse. As more details become known about the condominium in Florida, we learn about warnings that were never addressed. I’ve never seen such a tragic example of the mote and the beam…
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“And, historically, that’s actually a precondition for women ascending to power. Can they seize the moment?”  This headline on Alexis Grenell’s column in the print edition of The Nation attracted my attention immediately. She quotes New York State Senator Allesandra Biaggi: “We’ve got to move on past talking about the bad behavior of below-average men.”…
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[Editor’s Note: This post was scheduled at 12 PM Eastern on Friday, June 18th; see a postscript from Regina after the results at the end.] I am in the odd position of finishing this on Friday morning for publication Saturday. I want to write about the bishops’ decision on a proposal to draft a document…
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When I woke up Thursday morning, I was going to write how sad I was that Cardinal Reinhold Marx of Germany was resigning. When I was making breakfast, I heard on the BBC that Pope Francis had refused his resignation. What! Is that possible only in the church?  Our good leaders must not resign, which…
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On April 30, 2021, my colleague Ellie Harty, co-editor of Equal wRites (the publication of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Women’s Ordination Conference), asked me to write an article on the 2022 Vatican Synod. I agreed. On May 21, 2021, the Vatican announced that Pope Francis has changed the date of the Synod to October 2023 and…
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A perfect theme for Memorial Day weekend. This is the title of an exhibit at the New Museum in New York City. It closes June 6, a week and a day from today. I am very grateful for a late review by Clifford Thompson in Commonweal that got me there last weekend. If I had…
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This week I knew I was going to write about catechists because last week Pope Francis created such an “installed” ministry. I was not sure how I felt about it, frankly. Another crumb to the laity, mostly the women, who do this? Then I saw the photograph of Joseph Ilboudo and his wife, Lucienne Kabré…
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Sometimes there’s help from unexpected quarters. Take the USCCB draft document on communion for politicians who do not oppose abortion. Please.  Who decided to help with this? Cardinal Luis F. Ladaria, S.J., head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In a May 7 letter to Archbishop José H. Gomez, the president of…
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Honestly, I had trouble with the Roman numerals. I was taking notes by hand listening to Cardinal Joe Tobin’s talk in Chicago, and I kept writing something like JP XXXIII and crossing out the unnecessary letters. How infrequently I hear someone referring to John the Twenty-Third these days! Tobin, whose screen name is above, gave…
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Right now I have sixteen tabs in my browser gathering material as I consider a USCCB plan to address the Joe Biden communion issue at their June meeting. I wrote last week about an article I haven’t even linked to again: “I must admit that if Father Louis Cameli had come down differently on communion…
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