Category: catholic news

  I remember exactly where I was when I heard the news of the Pennsylvania Grand Jury hearing, and I expect I will remember for quite some time. Twelve other young women and I had just concluded our initiation ceremony into the Loretto Volunteer Program, surrounded by the Sisters of Loretto at their Motherhouse on…
Read more

I am a recent graduate from Loyola Marymount University, where I received a bachelor’s degree in Theology. I write as a theologian, a convert, a current Catholic volunteer and a concerned member of the Church. This past year I have watched the power of the #MeToo movement, started by Tarana Burke in 2006, create a space…
Read more

Everybody in the church, it seems, is disgusted by clericalism and is blaming it for the sexual abuse and cover-up crisis. Think about it – if the clergy is not to be left to its own devices any more, who will act? Lay people. I’m not blaming lay Catholics for this crisis; too much deliberate…
Read more

So much breaking news! Last week I filed this blog before the Pope’s statement, summarized well in LaCroix.  A nice statement, but, as Paul Moses notes in Commonweal, similar to what he said in 2015 when he met survivors – and Attorney General Shapiro? – in Philadelphia. This is an excellent analysis of what the…
Read more

Pennsylvania is my home, and again a grand jury report makes the news.  I hear about it on the radio and I am sad. I watch it on TV and I cry. I read the paper and I think. “It’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up.” This shibboleth from the Nixon era is NOT true…
Read more

When I started writing on this blog last fall, I asked Google Alerts to let me know when anything relevant to women’s ordination or women in the Catholic Church was posted online. In the beginning, I got articles from publications I never heard of before, and most of them opposed any change in the role…
Read more

Transition periods are unpleasant, to say the least. Shifting from what came before to what is to come is often a circuitous path without visible markers. Some transitions are abrupt and bring their own difficulties, but many transitions linger with us. In these slow transitions, we break from the past without quite propelling into the…
Read more

Few church leaders embraced Vatican II like Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen, who as a young bishop attended all four conciliar sessions and returned to the U.S. with a prophetic vision for implementing the Council’s teachings. Sadly, he passed away earlier this week at age 96. Hunthausen advocated for oppressed persons everywhere. He protested nuclear weapons as…
Read more

While I am a cradle Catholic, over the past few years I have found myself captivated by the practice of shamanism.  What draws me in is the emphasis on the spiritual connection with all the living—humans, plants, animals, the earth.  A few months ago I was out on retreat in the remote wilderness of Wisconsin…
Read more

I love the designated theme of this year’s Mary Magdalene Feast: “Celebrating Feminism & Faith in Union”. With this focus, how proudly we can join with other Catholic renewal groups in affirming the national and international Women’s Marches, #MeToo and #CatholicToo, all brave advocates for justice and rights of women, and those who participated in…
Read more