March 28th, 2020
When I get an earworm, you get to share it. The Plot Against America, the new HBO series, begins with this Depression-era song, “The Road is Open Again.” This short film like those shown in theaters at the time is hopelessly sexist and blatantly political, but, having taught this period in American history for so…
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March 10th, 2020
The following book review originally appeared in the Fall 2019 issue of New Women, New Church. Forty years ago, Theresa Kane stood up in the Basilica Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC, to greet Pope John Paul II on behalf of the sisters of the United States and spoke the truth in love,…
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February 22nd, 2020
The recent papal letter “Querida Amazonia” has left many of us puzzled, disappointed and frustrated in varying degrees as we try to understand what this response – or lack of response – means in both the short and long term. Much has already been written about this and I don’t want to belabor the issue: …
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February 15th, 2020
Reading the first three dreams of Francis’s apostolic exhortation on the Amazonian Synod, I am inspired enough to be merciful when I read the fourth. Those of you who are more concerned for the future of the earth than you are for women’s ordination – and I know you are out there – will be…
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February 11th, 2020
Evocative or inspiring? Edgy or lofty? Both/And? These are sometimes tough choices to sort through for all of us who want to get our messages of equality, justice, fairness, and inclusion across. What will resonate and how? I struggle with this problem all of the time. I suspect you might, too. I found two examples…
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February 8th, 2020
Joan Chittister’s “Prayer for Leadership” inspires me today (Thursday, February 6, 2020). She begins, Give us, O God, leaders whose hearts are large enough to match the breadth of our own souls and give us souls strong enough to follow leaders of vision and wisdom. This prayer puts in context not only our national politics,…
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February 1st, 2020
Russ Petrus, in FutureChurch’s newsletter, draws our attention to the readings for this Sunday, the Presentation of Christ in the Temple. There’s an option: to leave out the widow and prophet Anna. She “gave thanks to God and spoke about the child,” as did Simeon, but only he is quoted in Luke 2:22-40. Why did…
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January 21st, 2020
I came across two approaches to managing and/or healing rifts. One focused on personal and the other on political, but I thought both had something pertinent to say about how we might – or in the one case might not – approach and/or heal our own difficulties with gender issues within Catholic leadership and ministry.…
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January 18th, 2020
Next time someone tells you that women can’t be ordained because the church moves very slowly, put on your most mysterious face and whisper “pope emeritus.” Wiggle your eyebrows. As Massimo Faggioli says, “The ‘emeritus’ as an institution was created on the fly in those hectic weeks right before the conclave that elected Benedict’s successor,…
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January 11th, 2020
In his comment about last Saturday’s blog, Luis Gutierrez provided the perfect segue to my discussion of the second La Croix International series – and a new term for me: “equivalence.” He quotes Kari Elisabeth Borrensen: “In fact, no actualisation of gender equivalence is documented in any society before the twentieth-century European welfare states.” There’s…
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