Category: anti-oppression

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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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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We will be doing some dramatic gathering together, especially this month. The obvious, what I call “dramatic” gathering, will be for the Thanksgiving feast. The other major coming together will be to fulfill the request of the Pope to gather as a community to begin to dialogue about what we envision as a “synodal” new…
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Last week Regina Bannan wrote not only about Black Catholic History, but called us to action by remembering that “[L]ike all history, Black Catholic History is being made today as well, and the history of earlier eras has been communicated with new urgency in the last year.” Regina’s post and the work of Black Catholic scholars…
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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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I think all who champion the cause of women’s leadership and ordination within an oppressive and suppressive institution like the Catholic Church could relate to the body of works of the Nobel Prize for Literature honoree, Abdulrazak Gurnah. Furthermore, and more significantly, I think all those who perpetuate this oppression and suppression could learn, grow,…
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Add some imagination to your concept of Church, I’ve argued with its hierarchy. Give something new, even radical, a chance. It just might save you. And, by the way, giving what we are doing to the environment, opening our minds in all areas might save us, too. So, let’s just do that and see what…
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If you have not signed up for, or accessed online, NCR’s marvelous Earthbeat series, billed as “stories of climate crisis, faith and action”, please do so. The postings are brief but rich and varied; the suggested actions inspiring and, even better, manageable!  Beginning September 1 and continuing through October 4, authors, Brenna Davis and Michael…
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