There’s a Paul Simon song called “Train in the Distance,” with a line that goes like this:  The thought that life could be better is woven indelibly into our hearts and our brains. That pretty much sums up the message and the mission of Jesus: The world is a mess, getting worse by the day. (The…
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I had the opportunity to be with WOC in Rome for the first two weeks of the Synod and Synodality. The experience reaffirmed my vocation to continue to fight for the ordination of women in the Catholic Church.  There are so many things to write about regarding the Synod, and with the release of the…
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My trainer likes to have us do tightrope walking – just on the floor – to improve our balance. I’m not very good at it, especially when we are to look left and right as we walk toe to heel. This comes to mind as I read the tremendous volume of articles being generated about…
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After watching the US House of Representatives self-destruct on Tuesday, I’ve had it with parliaments. I trust the processes of the synod much more.  That’s how I answer the first discussion question Commonweal poses about Shaun Blanchard’s article, Synodality & Catholic Amnesia: “If you had to describe the Synod on Synodality to someone who knew nothing about…
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I’ve been nursing for a week my annoyance at a column by Michael Sean Winters in NCR in which he said: Miriam Duignan, a member of the leadership team at Women’s Ordination Worldwide, recently told NCR, “the synodal dialogue will be painfully incomplete and dishonest if it does not adequately address the widespread calls to open all ordained…
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[Editors’ note: Learn more about Walk with Women actions in various cities around the globe, and learn how to plan your own, here.] Activism sometimes precludes writing, and it just snuck up this week. So instead of a blog post, I’ll share with you what we sent to the members of SEPA WOC in the…
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Of course, you know what I mean. The Synod. I have been collecting articles but not writing about them, so today you get a smorgasbord of summaries that might set you searching for one or two that sparks your interest. Claire Giangrave for Religion News Service in NCR summarizes the state of the women’s ordination question by effectively…
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“The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice,” Martin Luther King Jr.  Whenever the March on Washington comes up, I throw in that I marched on Minneapolis. These smaller marches around the country don’t usually get noticed, but this one did this year, on the 60th anniversary, August 28, 2023,  because I…
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Last week, I wrote about five – and ultimately, six – “non-bishop” delegates from the United States to the Synod. All were delegates to the North American Continental Assembly, as were four other non-bishops chosen from Canada. You probably remember that Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean Islands were made part of the Latin American…
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The last time I tumbled the bin of Synod delegates, I got two cardinals. This time, five “non-bishops,” as the USCCB characterizes them, popped out. These delegates from the United States convince me that Pope Francis had a hand in picking them. They all have characteristics that suggest they are on the margins in one…
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