Category: General

After time off devoted to literature, family and friends, place – Maine, new furniture – how can I not mourn the passing of Toni Morrison? She wrote about everything. The Catholic press is debating whether she was a Catholic writer. Thursday, Carol Zimmerman, for Catholic News Service in NCR, summarizes: for those who have sought…
Read more

Commencement speech time has just ended, and those of us who attended graduations, from eighth grade through college and beyond, may have heard one or two or too many! Still, wherever we are in life, I think we need these pep talks yearly – maybe even daily. And we need them especially to inspire us…
Read more

“We Used To Think Photos Like This Could Change The World. What Needs To Change Is Who We Are” is the provocative title of a commentary by Philip Kennicott in the June 26 online edition of the Washington Post. (Content warning: The link contains a graphic photograph of people who drowned.) The photograph is the one…
Read more

Just thinking – what would happen if leadership Catholics, 10 at a time, were able to be on a national stage and asked hard questions that revealed what they are passionate about? How do we get our information about church issues that matter to us? The written word. NCR, America, Commonweal – all have podcasts,…
Read more

The New York Times last Sunday featured “The Sisters Project” about the “Nuns and Nones,” previously reported on by the NCR. , I mention the latter only to give us some insight into what is considered news by the broader journalistic community. This project is so hopeful: young, self-identified non-religious people live in convents where…
Read more

This started out as a reflection on Mother’s Day. I had begun thinking about the Church as Mother, and my own role as a mother, and was just piecing a lot of those thoughts together when I began to process the anti-abortion laws currently being voted on and passed in several states in the U.S.…
Read more

I return to my project two weeks ago, to look for references to feminism in the Catholic reform movement. First I do want to say that I don’t think that Joseph Ratzinger is now a convert to our cause; I think he just forgot to mention the women’s movement in his letter about causes of…
Read more

It’s nearly May. It’s gorgeous outside…and for once we just need to laugh and be joyous! Here is something you may have seen before, but it always makes me laugh out loud. It’s originally from Dr. David M. Scholer, a former professor at Fuller Theological Seminary. 10 Reasons Why Men Shouldn’t Be Ordained 10. A…
Read more

Nothing, based on our experience Thursday as guests in a class for a course called “Catholic Philadelphia: Then and Now.” Maureen Tate of the Grail and SEPA WOC and I were asked to speak on the local woman priest movement by a woman professor in this area school run by a men’s religious order. Every…
Read more

Perhaps you’ve heard that Joseph Ratzinger (formerly known as Pope Benedict XVI) published a letter last week about the causes of sex abuse and other problems in the church. He does not once mention the evils of feminism! He makes glancing references to women, like the danger when a “girlfriend” of a lay pastoral worker,…
Read more