Author: Regina Bannan

Last week, I was going to write about two ongoing Synod processes but I got captured by the Australians. This week I will write about the German Synodal Way. I have celebrated the decisions made there and the people leading the effort before, but, as you may have heard, not everybody is celebrating. An “unsigned…
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Despite the tremendous appeal of Pope Francis’s trip to ask for forgiveness from the indigenous peoples of Canada to the media worldwide, I am going to write about the Synod Process again. If we are to effectively advocate for people of all genders to be ordained, we have to understand what is happening around the…
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Remember when Pope Francis warned us not to gossip? “Gossip is war. Poor Holy Spirit! (Imagine) the work He [sic] has with us with our habit of gossiping!” That was in 2020, and a not-infrequent complaint from Francis in his first years as Pope. He’s not bringing it up so often now. I wonder if…
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Pope Francis made news this week with a promise to add two women to the committee that considers the appointment of bishops around the world.  This conversation with Philip Pullella of Reuters has the typical Francis off-the-cuff airplane feel; he says they’re “opening up a bit.” Cindy Wooden for CNS notes that there are several…
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The role of women, including the “failure” to “make good use” of their contribution and their exclusion from formal ministries, was described as a “constant theme” in diocesan reports. “On the whole women were not considered a marginalised minority so much as a silenced, unrecognised majority whose gifts lie unwrapped and ignored in the parish…
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This is it: No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance. Fifty years ago, this brief provision was inserted into the education law of the United…
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The January 6 hearings are what’s preoccupying me this week. They raise as many moral issues as anything else, but I don’t want to write about all that. Rather, I will call your attention to expanded dimensions of what will preoccupy us sometime soon: what does it mean to protect life, especially from the perspective…
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Terrifying! The headline on AP’s article by Nicole Winfield was reinforced by “unsourced speculation” that Pope Francis might be getting ready to resign. Visiting Pope Celestine V’s tomb (he resigned in 1294), appointing enough new cardinals to have a majority in the college, planning a briefing for ALL cardinals on the rules he just issued…
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I am thinking about fourth grade. Ten years old. Halfway through growing up. Neither child nor teenager. Not the innocence of second grade. Not as articulate as high school. How will they survive fourth grade? I think about the Latinx names we are hearing. When I taught about the West, I remember that south and…
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Is that what Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone is doing by refusing communion to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi? I thought that debate was over for good, that something between the words of the Pope and ordinary common sense must have prevailed among the bishops to avoid further public ridicule. It’s reported that Pelosi received communion last week…
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