February 9th, 2019
The irony does not escape me: On the day I’m writing this, the day after the State of the Union address, the two stories that interest me most on NPR and the BBC are about the speech and about the Pope’s acknowledgement that sisters have been sexually abused. Looking at all those Congresswomen in white…
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December 15th, 2018
This is my last column this year, so I am reflecting on what 2018 means to the politics of women in the Catholic church, which I have made my “beat” on this blog. It will be idiosyncratic, the first definition of which is “quirky.” Yep, that’s me. The 101 women who will be serving in…
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December 8th, 2018
Sex abuse. I have the image of everybody adjusting the focus of his or her own camera to see more clearly a solution to one aspect of the crisis: bishops who abuse or cover up. At the end of the USCCB meeting, Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago proposed that metropolitans (archbishops with rarely-used authority over…
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November 27th, 2018
Why does religion still matter? Why does it still have a hold on people? Why do people stay in and with the Church in an age in which reason, secularism, and materialism have become the new enchantments? At a recent meeting of Catholics Organized for Renewal (COR) in San Antonio, Texas, Michele Dillon, Ph.D. Professor…
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November 17th, 2018
It is hard to understand how Pope Francis can both condemn clericalism and override the American bishops’ attempt to establish a lay review board to oversee their own actions on sex abuse. Or appoint Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta to organize the world meeting on abuse prevention in February as part of a new role…
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November 10th, 2018
On August 1 it was announced that Pope Francis changed the catechism of the Catholic Church to make the death penalty unacceptable. On October 27, a shooter killed eleven people worshipping in a synagogue in Pittsburgh. I have wanted to write about the death penalty since the Pope’s proclamation, but first the sex abuse crisis…
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November 3rd, 2018
Christopher Lamb in The Tablet brings a certain British irony to his observations of the synod on youth: “It seems like going on retreat, with a generous helping of church politics thrown in, and a complicated Roman structure.” Yes to all of it. I sense that the lay people and reporters in Rome experienced the…
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October 27th, 2018
Has a certain ring to it, does it not? After All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day, observe All Survivor’s Day. Begun by the Survivor’s Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP), these nationwide and international witnesses will take place on Saturday, November 3. Most will be from 3 to 5 pm at cathedrals, but…
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October 13th, 2018
The question for this post is whether the image of nuns in popular culture prevents imagining women as priests. Or, is the image of priest so male that women cannot find a place in it? In our small faith community last week I was commenting on my experience of Rome a few years ago: nuns…
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October 9th, 2018
On the Sunday after the report came out about the egregious sexual abuse perpetrated by the clergy on youth in Pennsylvania, our priest began Mass by lighting ten circles of ten candles for the victims, praying for them, and apologizing on behalf of the Church. In the days preceding that Sunday, he had sent a…
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