Category: Preaching Equality

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.…
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A church community in Greenwich Village in New York City recently hosted an art installation. One of the “pieces” was a makeshift confessional. It was painted white and softly curtained. A screen cutout in decorated shapes both beautifully welcomed and separated speaker and listener. Those entering were not there to “confess” in any traditional sense.…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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,…
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Last year, I was asked to write a poem for Women’s History Month to be read at Mass, and the priest actually let me read this!  As we close out March and begin April, that month of rebirth, I offer you this:  A Church for Our Daughters Would it be stone-clad?With some rocks left overFor…
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I am not going to write much about the Pope’s summit now going on in the Vatican. I will remind you to wear a blue armband at Mass tonight as the Catholics Banding Together movement suggests. You will love the video they produced, especially if you’ve never seen and heard Theresa Kane’s 1979 address to…
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Did you notice this line in Josepha Madigan’s speech to We Are Church in Ireland? The full sentence is “Yes, we say to our daughters, you can be an altar girl but don’t get too ahead of yourself, you will never be a priest.” I love that Irish women who have succeeded in politics are…
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I’m sitting at the end of my friend’s bed in Sharjah, one of the seven United Arab Emirates (just outside its more famous sister city, Dubai). I’m on my winter break from divinity school and another friend and I have flown here to visit Bushra, one of our best friends from college. We hadn’t seen…
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