Author: Ellie Harty

I just don’t know how I feel about this. What do you think? On a recent vacation, I couldn’t resist visiting what is billed as “the largest crucifix in the world” in the national shrine of The Cross in the Woods in Indian River, Michigan. (And what did you do on your summer vacation? Not…
Read more

I’m still in “commencement speech” mode. Please bear with me. It’s just that at this time of the year so many extraordinary people are giving us – or, in the case below, have given us  – so much extraordinary inspiration and encouragement, I cannot resist passing it on. Paul Hawken, author and “visionary environmental activist”…
Read more

Commencement speech time has just ended, and those of us who attended graduations, from eighth grade through college and beyond, may have heard one or two or too many! Still, wherever we are in life, I think we need these pep talks yearly – maybe even daily. And we need them especially to inspire us…
Read more

“We Used To Think Photos Like This Could Change The World. What Needs To Change Is Who We Are” is the provocative title of a commentary by Philip Kennicott in the June 26 online edition of the Washington Post. (Content warning: The link contains a graphic photograph of people who drowned.) The photograph is the one…
Read more

We talk about – or more often mourn the loss of – the gifts of women to our Church. Last week I wrote about an article touting women’s gifts as a resource to “save the world” and added, “and also the Church.” The reach and vision was universal. Now I’d like to focus on some…
Read more

“Can Women Save the World?” an author of a recent New York Times article asked. Wow, I thought. I was just hoping they could save the Church!  Tina Brown, founder of the Women in the World summit, former New Yorker editor-in-chief, and host of a podcast TBD, argues that “a new paradigm of female leadership…
Read more

Looking for where we find happiness as an inspiration for creating a new inclusive church for a new day? Worth a try, I think. I was originally inspired in this quest by an article in the November 2017 issue of National Geographic entitled “The World’s Happiest Places”.  Not to keep you in suspense, they are:…
Read more

Regina Bannan in The Table has given us enlightening, witty, and profound insights into James Carroll’s “To Save the Church, Dismantle the Priesthood” article in The Atlantic. Humbly, I’d like to add a progressive (I hope!) Catholic layperson’s reaction to part of the article as well. Often criticism articles like Carroll’s focus on analyzing problems,…
Read more

The other week I attended a one man play called How I Learned What I Learned. Autobiographical, the play’s “one man” was the playwright himself, and the drama focused on his growing up in one of the poorest neighborhoods of racially divided Pittsburgh. He took us on a journey through his life, loves, poetic and…
Read more

We know who they are! They are even “on parade” on Holy Thursday and Ordination Day at the Cathedral of Saints Peter & Paul in Philadelphia! They censor our rituals; they kill the joy of our celebrations by denying access, based solely on gender, to ministry and, most egregiously, to a holy Sacrament. They do…
Read more