This week I knew I was going to write about catechists because last week Pope Francis created such an “installed” ministry. I was not sure how I felt about it, frankly. Another crumb to the laity, mostly the women, who do this? Then I saw the photograph of Joseph Ilboudo and his wife, Lucienne Kabré…
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Ready to have your heart broken?  Then be inspired again? And proud to be Catholic? Read the narratives of some Catholic nuns on the ground in India during this horrific time of pandemic, suffering, and deprivation. We all see the clips on the news. We watch as cameras skim over jammed hospitals, overwrought caregivers, funeral…
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Sometimes there’s help from unexpected quarters. Take the USCCB draft document on communion for politicians who do not oppose abortion. Please.  Who decided to help with this? Cardinal Luis F. Ladaria, S.J., head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In a May 7 letter to Archbishop José H. Gomez, the president of…
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No matter what gender you are, how do you react to that statement? Much to the surprise of my female colleagues reading this statement with me for the first time, I found it insulting, supercilious, and patronizing. (They thought it was more or less true!) I, however, had immediately thought of Mary, mother of Jesus,…
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Honestly, I had trouble with the Roman numerals. I was taking notes by hand listening to Cardinal Joe Tobin’s talk in Chicago, and I kept writing something like JP XXXIII and crossing out the unnecessary letters. How infrequently I hear someone referring to John the Twenty-Third these days! Tobin, whose screen name is above, gave…
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[Editor’s Note: This post was translated from the original Spanish by our Escuchando a las Mujeres team, Lilian and Lorena. You can read it in Spanish here.] April was Sexual Assault Awareness Month (SAAM) and we hosted the second event of our series Connecting Experiences of Faith and Feminism. This time our subject was Facing Sexual…
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Back in the day – and that day would be sometime in the early 1970’s – my then-young family and I walked into a church community about which we had heard vague but enthusiastic praise. What we saw first amazed – and then completely captivated – us.  All around the worship space, we saw folding…
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Right now I have sixteen tabs in my browser gathering material as I consider a USCCB plan to address the Joe Biden communion issue at their June meeting. I wrote last week about an article I haven’t even linked to again: “I must admit that if Father Louis Cameli had come down differently on communion…
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The Anti-Oppression Team is responsible for developing strategies that deepen WOC’s commitment to full inclusivity and equity within the structure of WOC itself and in the Roman Catholic Church. WOC values diverse identities, genders, and ministries as we strive to create a church and society where everyone is free to respond to God’s call without…
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Just as spring brings us a fresh – and exhilarant – experience of the world and newly minted lenses through which we can see more deeply and fully into lives and landscapes around us, I propose we also try out new lenses to see ourselves and our own mission for inclusion and ministry in a…
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