The week before Christmas I visited the Yucatan town of Merida, Mexico, and its surroundings. Inspired, I include here now, mostly in pictures, my dream for a new Church for a new year. This is the cathedral in the main plaza in Merida regaled in Christmas light. Flowers, leaves, tendrils of growth, both dazzling and…
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Again, a simple greeting. You may be eager to see 2021 end. We will remember this year, or these two years, as historic. We pray that the number of deaths from COVID will never be repeated – yet we are fearful of global climate catastrophe. Despite our technological progress, can we keep people alive? At…
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Merry Christmas to you and your family: your family of origin and your chosen families as well. If it seems trite to focus on family at Christmas, being in a loving community is the essence of the message of Jesus. I have been moved by a post by Jacob Kohlhaas, an associate professor of moral…
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This painting is by Flemish painter, Pieter Bruegel the Elder. If you know his paintings, you also know they are most always teeming with abundant life. Everyone is busy, tending to chores, to animals, to each other. Men and women in this painting are toiling or transacting or talking or taking time for skating, sledding,…
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Because it’s part of a Vatican apology, I’m willing to accept the characterization of peripheral. A Vatican apology, you say? When has that ever happened? Last week, as it turns out. Thierry Bonaventura, the communications manager of the Synod of Bishops’ office, apologized to “all LGBTQ people” and republished the link to the New Ways…
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Isn’t this painting magnificent? Artist Bryn Gillette sweeps us into the swirl of life surrounding women who are with child. Out of whirlpools of love and suffering and chaos, they are bringing forth new life in all its variety, in all its sweetness, in all its hues and tints and tones, in all its depth…
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“A valiant woman” is the lovely complement that Pope Francis gives to Sister of Loretto Jeannine Gramick in a handwritten note to New Ways Ministry last June. NCR reports: “I know how much she has suffered,” the pope wrote. “She is a valiant woman who makes her decisions in prayer.”  New Ways Executive Director Frank…
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I have attended Catholics schools for the entirety of my life, from preschool through college, where I am now. My experience has always been what I would describe as pleasant, and I am grateful for the moral foundations I received, and particularly the lifelong friendships I was able to cultivate. Some of my favorite memories…
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Annunciation Even if I don’t see it again—nor ever feel it I know it is—and that if once it hailed me it ever does— And so it is myself I want to turn in that direction not as towards a place, but it was a tilting within myself, as one turns a mirror to flash…
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After a month of looking at issues of oppression that we can use our priesthood to address, I am delighted to find important articles on ordination.  In La Croix International, George Wilson presents a deceptively simple analysis of the situation. He begins slowly: it’s a “policy” to exclude a “class” of people based on “gender.”…
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