Category: Women’s Ordination

A retreat is an odd mental space. The Core Committee of Southeastern Pennsylvania WOC met all day on September 24 and decided it would be a good idea to attend a presentation by the Director of the Office for the New Evangelization for Archdiocese of Philadelphia, Meghan Cokeley. “What Can We Do? The Role of…
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On October 26, the day of the vote, I posted a blog predicting what the final document that the Synod on the Amazon would say. Ellie Harty, my fellow blogger and editor of SEPA WOC’s Equal wRites, suggested that I write what actually was done “in the room where it happens.” Sorry. That’s my trite…
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Imagine having this staring at you: Plastered on a huge rear tire on the car in front of you, a huge Tweetie Bird, hands on hips, looking right at you and… scowling! Not too sweet – or “tweet” as Tweetie would say. He was definitely not about to utter his signature “I tought I thaw…
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This afternoon in Rome, just as this blog is published at 10 am Eastern, 185 men will vote. There are 184 bishop and priest voting members of the gathering, and one member who is a religious brother. There are 80 non-voting participants, of whom 35 are women. For most of the Oct. 6-27 event, there…
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Just when we are all settled in, safe and snug, resting, complacent even, BOOM another change? challenge? blow? comes our way…and I don’t even write about politics! We’ve had many such blows, or perhaps said more charitably – challenges, in our relationship with our Church and its unending repression of some genders over others. At…
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If you were at “Radicals and The Rule,” you may know what I am going to write about. And no, it’s not Joan Chittister’s challenge to confront “the wholly owned subsidiary of pious males” about inclusive language, for God and for people. The most trenchant comment I heard after the session was “Forty years later…
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“There is an endless net of threads throughout the universe…” Indra’s Net from the Rig Veda We see so much that divides and separates us. We write about those divisions weekly in these very posts.  We also delve into some remedies: giving gratitude for the gifts of women and other genders in leadership and ministry,…
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Last week I wrote about the Pope’s comments on the plane about schism. I imagine he’s wishing he hadn’t opened that can of worms – because everybody’s talking about it. The latest to reach in is Villanova’s Massimo Faggioli, dealing with what a schism actually is and when they’ve actually happened. I had the feeling…
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If you are reading this and are female, you will know exactly what the “likability trap” is and probably have been at some point been at its mercy. I sure have and sometimes, I shudder to think, may still be. It’s a snare that entraps women who want to use their power to effect change…
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I expect more from the Jesuits. I admit that I idealize the intellectual tradition I have always believed they embody. So I cannot understand why America magazine has begun publishing Pia de Solenni, who recently ended her tenure as Chancellor of the Diocese of Orange in California. Her first article in May is “What the…
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