Category: Pope Francis

The American poet Louise Glück has just been awarded this year’s Nobel prize for literature. Here is one of her poems: Celestial Music I have a friend who still believes in heaven. Not a stupid person, yet with all she knows, she literally talks to God. She thinks someone listens in heaven. On earth she’s…
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Of course, the central conceit of Pope Francis’s latest encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, is a problem. The deep meaning he attaches to “fraternity” is meant to extend the warm feeling of male bonding to all of humanity. But male bonding leaves me out and leaves me cold. What does not leave me cold is separating out…
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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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Half empty or half full, as the old cliché goes. Is it possible for you to keep up your enthusiasm, or do you despair that women will be ordained in the Roman Catholic Church in your lifetime? Several long articles examining this very question have appeared in the last couple of weeks. FutureChurch’s Deborah Rose-Milavec…
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Maybe Christine Schenk, CSJ, had the same problem I had this week. There is so much going on, from the Conventions to the Centenary, that I need a nice, quiet topic. What have I missed in this summer of news breaking all the time? Parishes. Specifically, the July 20 papal Instruction on parishes. It’s especially…
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Recently I became a vegetarian. Big deal, you might think, especially if you have been vegetarian or vegan for a long time or all of your life. Oh no, you might think, not one of those people especially if you’ve been a lifetime devotee of the ‘food chain’ justification of meat-eating or just continued enjoyment…
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I am writing during “Laudato Si’ Week”, the fifth anniversary of Pope Francis’ encyclical letter: “On Care for Our Common Home”.  This particular encyclical made me proud to be Catholic (instead of a confusing mixture of semi-lapsed, semi-faithful) and grateful to have a Pope, if only to give us someone as a world-recognized spokesperson with…
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The day after I wrote my blog on spiritual communion last week, the Pope addressed it. I don’t claim there was a causal relationship, but it’s clearly an issue that deserves examining again. I also appreciate the comments I received on and off-line, especially those of my sister, who spelled out the way the Archdiocese…
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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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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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