Author: Regina Bannan

Because it’s part of a Vatican apology, I’m willing to accept the characterization of peripheral. A Vatican apology, you say? When has that ever happened? Last week, as it turns out. Thierry Bonaventura, the communications manager of the Synod of Bishops’ office, apologized to “all LGBTQ people” and republished the link to the New Ways…
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“A valiant woman” is the lovely complement that Pope Francis gives to Sister of Loretto Jeannine Gramick in a handwritten note to New Ways Ministry last June. NCR reports: “I know how much she has suffered,” the pope wrote. “She is a valiant woman who makes her decisions in prayer.”  New Ways Executive Director Frank…
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After a month of looking at issues of oppression that we can use our priesthood to address, I am delighted to find important articles on ordination.  In La Croix International, George Wilson presents a deceptively simple analysis of the situation. He begins slowly: it’s a “policy” to exclude a “class” of people based on “gender.”…
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The last reflection for November prepared by WOC’s Anti-Oppression Committee recognizes another commemorative month, that for Native American Heritage. I will emphasize the “Catholic angle.” Have you always known that there is a “Catholic angle” to the indigenous story in the Americas? Kind of around the corner, I’d argue, rarely straightforward. My story begins at…
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In Birth of a Movement: Black Lives Matter and the Catholic Church, Olga M. Segura documents how Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi “created a decentralized community of activists who stand in solidarity with the rallying cry, ‘Black Lives Matter,’ and center the lived experiences of society’s most vulnerable, Black transgender and queer women…
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Alert: shifting from Bishops and Vatican! From Synods and Communion! Commemorative weeks exist to remind us to think beyond our immediate concerns, and I will do that this week, relying first on historian Shannen Dee Williams of Villanova University, who has done so much to recover the story of American Catholic sisters. What stands out…
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These two old men meet the day after I write this and the day before you read it. Will it be old news for you? I expect that whatever media you consult will have reported “all the news that’s fit to print,” the old New York Times slogan, forever new in whatever media. But that’s…
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Sometimes I do wonder at the contradictions. How do we make sense of it all?  Do women need to be encouraged to lead? I can’t find a text – maybe I don’t want to – of a welcome Pope Francis sent to the Women’s Forum G-20 at their meeting before the global summit. It was…
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Yes, I say. I am going to trust the outcome regarding the ordination of women as deacons or as priests. How can I say that? First, Germany. The church there is in the midst of a “Synodal Path,” on which representatives of the clergy and the laity gather to discuss “power and checks and balances,”…
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You have probably heard the Catholic news from France this week. The dimensions are truly tragic: “216,000 people were sexually abused by clerics and another 114,000 by lay people in Church-related functions such as catechists and schoolteachers since 1950,” according to The Tablet. That’s about half the number of those who have died so far…
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