Author: Ellie Harty

Perhaps one of the most touching descriptions of God as multi-gendered, if gendered at all, came from Jesus’ analogy of God as Mother Hen. How appropriate for the Easter season! And how appropriate for all of us who witness for the leadership and ordination of people of all genders in our Church. From Luke 13:31-32,…
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It is Holy Week. Throughout the world people are in processions. Some are participating in religious traditions; some are marching for their lives. Some begin in Palm Sunday joy and end in Good Friday grief; others begin in terror and grief and end in, if not joy, then at least safety and welcome. Still others…
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We have just celebrated the feast of the Annunciation. A submissive Mary or a courageous Mary – depending on your take on the story or perhaps on women, themselves – has just said either: “Let it be done unto me” or “Yes”. Most of us, I hope, prefer the latter. In any case, Mary did…
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How prevalent, how ingrained, how sad – still – is our penchant to evaluate our own our worth through other people’s eyes, especially, although not exclusively, if we are female or other-gendered. In these waning days of a month focusing on women, I offer a short piece that gives us one more tool to assess…
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Some recent articles focusing on Women’s History Month have been quite provocative, especially when penned by women of color. I have had my proud and persistent dedication to feminism challenged in the past and have made amendments as a result, but these newer perspectives along with their reminders of some past problematic manifestations of the…
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Traditionally, the Catholic Lenten message to us about Christ’s forty day desert sojourn has been: Take time out of your busy lives to do the same. Immerse yourself in a severe and sere inner landscape, as harsh and unforgiving as the desert, and examine what tempts you away from God. Spend enough time in deprivation,…
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This is a picture of a cross adorned for Lent outside the Iglesia de San Francisco in Antigua, Guatemala. At first I truly looked at the image with what I call “new eyes.”  I saw a child’s raggedy dress, workers’ crudely wrought hand tools, a sword pointed away from potential victims, a ladder offering elevation,…
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“A static Church is a museum church,” Pope Francis told students from Catholic universities in North, South, and Central America and the Caribbean as he and some of their student representatives conversed via YouTube on February 24 as hundreds of us listened in. When we go to a museum, he continued, we knock on a…
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Sometimes I need a reminder of why I do what I do. Regina Bannan’s February 12 post did give us a reminder of all the good news we who work for justice and inclusion of all genders, races, sexual identities in our Church and its priesthood have had recently. And I’m cheered – in a…
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What you looking at Mr./Ms. Owl? And why can I barely see you when I look back? When asking myself or others the “big questions” in life about purpose, justice, spirit or the Spirit, security and tradition vs. monumental change, belief and believing, how, why, if…I sometimes get nowhere with prose, written or spoken. There’s…
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