Category: anti-oppression

A couple of months ago, I learned of an educational program hosted by the Catholic Leaders Latin-American Academy on the International Social Doctrine of the Church called Feminism, Gender and Catholic Identity. The theme stemmed from an invitation from Pope Francis to present a proposal for a new Christian Feminism to analyze the philosophical and…
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As much as I love a moral dilemma, I also love a challenge, especially one in which I gain new perspectives and grow in understanding. I refer my post last week titled “A Moral Dilemma,” which engendered more commentary and response than I expected! One especially challenged me to examine how surface our thinking can…
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The morning after Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, I found myself reading a book review by Rich Yesselson in The Nation. Loomis is one of a number of contemporary scholars and thinkers whom I would call “pessimistic militants”—embodiments of the Gramscian cliché about pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will. The pessimistic militants study…
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I am always fascinated by “moral dilemmas”, and so, as you can imagine, I am in a state of constant fascination these days since there are so many demanding our attention out there in our world. The good news is I feel rather equipped to deal with them, as maybe you do, because I’ve had…
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Breakfast reading brought inspiration through fabulous writing by Patricia Williams in The Nation. In “The Color of Contagion” she ties diverse topics like medical education and the history of discrimination to the coronavirus and its disparate impact on minorities in the United States. A sample: “Americans are not raised to believe in the entanglements of…
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Was this an apology? America threw up online a 2009 article about the errors it had published in its 100 year history. Among them, opposing suffrage in September 1920. James T. Keane, summarizes: “the editors fretted about the damage universal suffrage might do to so delicate a creature as woman.” He quotes, “‘Is the contest…
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There was no way I could not weave women’s suffrage into this narrative today, for tomorrow, August 26, 2020, is the 100th Anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution. What a journey they undertook, what a victory they earned. And what a reminder that to truly realize equality, we…
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This June, only five us stood outside our city’s cathedral to hold up our “Ordain Women” signs as men only were being ordained inside. So few were able to attend the witness this year, we almost did not come at all fearing we would look weak or pathetic with such low numbers. But it was…
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I don’t envy the members of the Church hierarchy and all who follow their mandates. I don’t envy them when, with consciences afire, biases lit up, monstrous ignorance in flames and dangerous and destructive misogyny ablaze, they finally have to reckon with their treatment of, and discrimination against, women and all genders and all races…
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How, for all these years, could I not have noticed the last sentence of the Gospel of Matthew 14:13-21?  This Gospel relates the famous story of Jesus’ feeding multitudes of people from only a few loaves of bread and some fish. It is one of the most moving and inspirational of Jesus’ “miracles” assuring us,…
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