Casey Cep wrote that line in a book review for the New Yorker, and it jumped right out of context and into my consciousness. In fact, I read that line soon after returning from the Catholics Organized for Renewal witness and march at the Baltimore U.S. Bishops’ conference. We walked the chilly streets chanting “Bread…
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The last reflection for November prepared by WOC’s Anti-Oppression Committee recognizes another commemorative month, that for Native American Heritage. I will emphasize the “Catholic angle.” Have you always known that there is a “Catholic angle” to the indigenous story in the Americas? Kind of around the corner, I’d argue, rarely straightforward. My story begins at…
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I’m sure he meant it as a wonderfully comforting image when Matthew Gambino in CatholicPhilly.com, the site offering “news from the Archdiocese of Philadelphia” described our synodal path together: “This synod is a seat at the kitchen table, set with fresh bread and hot coffee. It’s a shady path down which we walk with a…
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In Birth of a Movement: Black Lives Matter and the Catholic Church, Olga M. Segura documents how Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi “created a decentralized community of activists who stand in solidarity with the rallying cry, ‘Black Lives Matter,’ and center the lived experiences of society’s most vulnerable, Black transgender and queer women…
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We will be doing some dramatic gathering together, especially this month. The obvious, what I call “dramatic” gathering, will be for the Thanksgiving feast. The other major coming together will be to fulfill the request of the Pope to gather as a community to begin to dialogue about what we envision as a “synodal” new…
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Last week Regina Bannan wrote not only about Black Catholic History, but called us to action by remembering that “[L]ike all history, Black Catholic History is being made today as well, and the history of earlier eras has been communicated with new urgency in the last year.” Regina’s post and the work of Black Catholic scholars…
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I recently attended a play (masked but in person – hooray!), Minor Character, subtitled “Six Translations of Uncle Vanya at the Same Time”.  To say it was raucous would be an understatement. The gentle, poignant Chekhov play I had always known suddenly turned into circus, loud, brash, and very much in-your-face in its presentation of…
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Alert: shifting from Bishops and Vatican! From Synods and Communion! Commemorative weeks exist to remind us to think beyond our immediate concerns, and I will do that this week, relying first on historian Shannen Dee Williams of Villanova University, who has done so much to recover the story of American Catholic sisters. What stands out…
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As you read this, international leaders, climate experts and activists are coming together at the United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP26, in Glasgow, Scotland to determine where we are now, and what we need to do in the future, globally, to protect the earth from past, present, and future harm from fossil fuel emissions. I…
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These two old men meet the day after I write this and the day before you read it. Will it be old news for you? I expect that whatever media you consult will have reported “all the news that’s fit to print,” the old New York Times slogan, forever new in whatever media. But that’s…
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