Category: Pope Francis

There are only so many ideas, apparently. I thought of this wonderful beginning for today’s blog and in saving it I found this, from May 20, 2020: Step by step the longest march can be won, can be won  Many stones can form an arch, singly none, singly none  And by union, what we will…
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Those with roots in Europe may be more concerned about Ukraine than the Catholic press seems to be here. After all, we’re a lot further from the fighting and the sanctions. For example, in London The Tablet seems to devote its whole print issue to the crisis. The summaries of two articles intrigue me: “Robert…
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“A static Church is a museum church,” Pope Francis told students from Catholic universities in North, South, and Central America and the Caribbean as he and some of their student representatives conversed via YouTube on February 24 as hundreds of us listened in. When we go to a museum, he continued, we knock on a…
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Priesthood is the topic of a three-day Symposium organized by Cardinal Marc Ouellet in what may be his last gasp as head of the Congregation of Bishops. In April 2021, I wrote about its lineup of women theologians based at Vatican institutions. They are scheduled for two sessions, one about complementarity and the other on…
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The cause of women is advanced in two surprising ways this week. A priest in Hoboken uses his religion column in the local newspaper to suggest that women’s ordination may not be impossible. And Pope Francis encourages religious and consecrated women to “fight back” if they are exploited. Rev. Alexander Santora, pastor of Our Lady…
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Pope Francis talked about vocations to Greek Jesuits late last year, Christopher Lamb reports. The number of Jesuits has been halved since he joined in 1958, and other orders of men and women are seeing similar declines. At least, I would add, and in the diocesan priesthood as well. Francis’s further reflections are worth thinking…
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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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These two old men meet the day after I write this and the day before you read it. Will it be old news for you? I expect that whatever media you consult will have reported “all the news that’s fit to print,” the old New York Times slogan, forever new in whatever media. But that’s…
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Yes, I say. I am going to trust the outcome regarding the ordination of women as deacons or as priests. How can I say that? First, Germany. The church there is in the midst of a “Synodal Path,” on which representatives of the clergy and the laity gather to discuss “power and checks and balances,”…
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You have probably heard the Catholic news from France this week. The dimensions are truly tragic: “216,000 people were sexually abused by clerics and another 114,000 by lay people in Church-related functions such as catechists and schoolteachers since 1950,” according to The Tablet. That’s about half the number of those who have died so far…
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