Category: #achurchforourdaughters

What a joy to spend the first week of September in beautiful, vibrant, complicated, art-infused Mexico City as part of a pilgrimage with the two-years-young organization Discerning Deacons, to celebrate the Feast of Deacon St. Phoebe at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe. There were 60 of us from North and South America, primarily…
Read more

[Editors’ note: the following is excerpted from “WILDFlower: Untaming St. Thérèse of Lisieux,” a retreat WOC offered to members in October 2021, and facilitated by Nancy Corran and Jocelyn Sideco. The following text draws from many sources, linked below.] “Jesus set before me the book of nature. I understand how all the flowers God had…
Read more

“What difference would it make?” Professor Emerita Ross S. Kraemer asked this question both before and after presenting her analysis of women’s authorship in Jewish and Christian literature in the Greco-Roman period (ca 400 BCE to 400 CE) on September 20 as part of FutureChurch’s Women Erased series. Since hard evidence supporting women’s authorship is…
Read more

Maybe you’ve seen this already, but read it again: There was a desire for stronger leadership, discernment, and decision-making roles for women – both lay and religious – in their parishes and communities: “people mentioned a variety of ways in which women could exercise leadership, including preaching and ordination as deacon or priest. Ordination for…
Read more

You know how you’re not supposed to discuss religion, politics, or sex if you want to have a peace-filled and conflict-free gathering among friends? Well, the other day, a group of us were talking about a book we had all read about modern Irish history which included as a predominant topic the collapse of the…
Read more

Here are two books I would love to see taught in all middle schools but especially Catholic ones.Both (almost) made me want to start teaching again – even in middle school! One is called Attack of the Black Rectangles by Amy Sarig King. The menacing “black rectangles” of the title attack pre-teen’s schoolbooks, first encapsulating…
Read more

Each morning I have to wait an hour after taking a prescribed medication before I can eat anything or – gulp! – even have coffee. What does anyone do with an hour like that? Nothing especially productive in my case. (Please don’t judge: I haven’t had coffee yet!) What I do manage to do is…
Read more

“Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair: Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.” Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass…
Read more

Since I am so besotted by Avivah Zornberg, Scotch-Israeli master of midrash, and her insights into the Book of Exodus, I decided to expand on last week’s post. (As a quick reminder, midrash is the Jewish practice of deeply reading sacred texts again and again to uncover ever-changing and new sacred and intellectual layers of…
Read more

What occurs to you in looking at this collage of recently-appointed presidents at Jesuit colleges? Only in the fourth paragraph does author Michael J. O’Loughlin move beyond his characterization of these leaders as “laypeople” by noting Pope Francis’ appointment of more women to top Vatican positions. Far be it from me to do a gender…
Read more