Category: Women’s Ordination

“Blasted” is how Nicole Winfield of the Associated Press characterizes the response of the Women’s Ordination Conference to Pope Francis’s new apostolic exhortation, “Christus Vivit.” Winfield does not quote WOC’s best blast: that the Pope is “suggesting no concrete actions to further his own bishops’ call for the inclusion of women in decision-making and leadership…
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We in the Southeastern Pennsylvania division of Women’s Ordination Conference on each Holy Thursday hold a witness calling for the ordination of women. We stand in song and prayer outside the Basilica of Saints Peter & Paul in Philadelphia in all kinds of weather – rain, snow, sleet, heat – while, inside, the (Vatican-sanctioned) male…
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I am so impressed by New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s decision not to name the gunman who killed fifty people at two mosques last week. I would like hers to become a household name — “very well-known,” as the dictionary defines it — and not only for this decision. She and her cabinet have…
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Our rules. Our rituals. The Catholic Church’s. Our society’s. Our own. How did we get so out of date. So stuck. So imprisoned. And, most importantly, how can we finally be free. I am currently reading John Banville’s Time Pieces: A Dublin Memoir – just in time for Saint Patrick’s Day, I suppose, although that…
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If you have not read Alice McDermott’s latest book, The Ninth Hour, I urge you to run, not walk, to the nearest bookstore, library, or e-book download! Beautifully written, unsentimentally poignant, compelling and affecting, it actually makes you proud to be Catholic just based on what so many nuns in the past have been doing…
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This is the insight of Margaret McLaughlin, looking at the photos of the last day of the summit on sex abuse. All those pink hats on the bishops! We are reminded, of course, of all the pink hats worn around the world as women lift their voices and hearts during the now-annual marches in January.…
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How much more can we take? We wore our blue armbands this past weekend to stand in solidarity with victims of sex abuse. We asked over and over for accountability, change, and redress from the Church that betrayed them, and yet, it seems daily, more and more abuse comes into the light. We protested unfair…
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On a recent February Sunday at Mass, we celebrated Black History Month. Our pastor, who is Caucasian, donned colorful, African-inspired vestments. After the welcome and gathering, he went down to the aisle and called forth two of the parish’s African-American elders. A tall woman and tall man in African garb joined their hands over him…
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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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Well, to answer the question with a shaky “yes”, I often have to turn to those with thoughts much wiser than mine.  Brian Cahill on SemNet Live in February 2015 tackled the topic in Our Troubled Church and Why Some of Us Stay and helped reacquaint me with some of that wisdom. He quotes Michael…
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