Author: Ellie Harty

As soon as I saw the title Crossroads, I knew this was an exhibit I had to see. We are at so many “crossroads” now: locally, nationally, internationally – in providing healthcare, aid, protection, political, social, and moral actions – in sorting out who we are and how we relate to each other and our…
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The beauty in this is beyond words, and yet words they are. Excerpts of a poem by Eliza Gonzalez: ***                         Hot mornings. Hot apple tea, honeyed.                         The mountains a fist knuckled on the horizon.                         Dust is coming, dust is not yet here. ***                         — Examples of what, I do not know.…
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Maybe what we need in our fraying, graying, grating old Church is a more appealing and enticing overhaul, one that energizes young people, that engages conservatives as well as progressives, that challenges everyone of every race and  gender to preserve the old by infusing it with the new. I’m talking about honoring the dynamics and…
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On July 4 of this year I marched in an Independence Day parade in a small town in northern Michigan. Main Street (near a gorgeous lake) was impressively packed with young and old, flourishing flags and clamorously cheering. Unfortunately, however, those cheers were not extended quite so enthusiastically to us! I was marching with a…
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View Post You probably know the source of many of the misguided, nasty, misogynistic stories about Mary Magdalene and of the mostly, if not exclusively, men with agendas who propagated them. The main impetus for them came primarily from one short paragraph in the New Testament describing Jesus’ having to cast out seven demons from…
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Do we have the potential of taking up too much space, we women and other-gendered? Are they afraid we would crowd them out or hem them in with the weight of our untapped wisdom?  The volume of our unheard words?  The massiveness of our ignored resources? The expansiveness of the fresh perspectives and renewed spirit…
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It is official. It is now ‘codified’ into church law: “A person who attempts to confer a sacred order on a woman, and the woman who attempts to receive the sacred order,” will receive automatic excommunication.  Most of the news services used variations on these words: “While the church has for centuries banned women from…
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I raised my children with carrots only, no sticks. It’s not that I was so patient, kind, and lofty. I simply could not physically – or, a bit less successfully, emotionally – hurt someone. I was also a devotee of Dr. Spock’s assertion that hitting a child teaches the child that when you’re angry, hit.…
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When facing the major crises of our lives today, do you find yourself asking the same question over and over: But what can I do? Of course, organizations or groups working to resolve the crises often give us the same easy answer: “Donate”.  And we do. And perhaps that truly is what has the most…
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Ready to have your heart broken?  Then be inspired again? And proud to be Catholic? Read the narratives of some Catholic nuns on the ground in India during this horrific time of pandemic, suffering, and deprivation. We all see the clips on the news. We watch as cameras skim over jammed hospitals, overwrought caregivers, funeral…
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