Congress can’t seem to pass a stimulus package or keep the president from hosting COVID parties. But here’s what I wish they would do: Ban the use of the phrase “In these difficult times.” You want to know difficult times? About five hundred years ago, a microscopic bacteria called y. pestis hitched a ride on…
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The American poet Louise Glück has just been awarded this year’s Nobel prize for literature. Here is one of her poems: Celestial Music I have a friend who still believes in heaven. Not a stupid person, yet with all she knows, she literally talks to God. She thinks someone listens in heaven. On earth she’s…
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Of course, the central conceit of Pope Francis’s latest encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, is a problem. The deep meaning he attaches to “fraternity” is meant to extend the warm feeling of male bonding to all of humanity. But male bonding leaves me out and leaves me cold. What does not leave me cold is separating out…
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What possibilities arise when we take on rearranging world-wearied words, exhausted expressions, tiresome traditions, tedious tenets, parched principles, prosaic practices to discover, or even create, something utterly fresh, invigorating, maybe even electrifying! In fact, perhaps the one good thing that comes out of the Catholic Church’s centuries old ban on any other than male words,…
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I have no business addressing this topic. I can’t even communicate with Jamie Manson to congratulate her on her new job because I’m not on the social media she suggests. That she’s so modern does make me feel that she’ll continue doing a great job speaking to and for Catholic women everywhere. Articles in print…
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Every few days I have to visit and find them. Yes, there is the green and brown frog blinking at me until I get too close and she cannot stand it and bolts into the water. Ah, over there, thank heavens, is the turtle basking in afternoon sun; don’t let the others know, but he’s…
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Having met Tony Flannery, the Irish Redemptorist priest, in 2014 when he toured the United States, I mourn for his current situation. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) has asked him to assent to four statements, and he has declined. NCR and other outlets broke the news on September 15, and later…
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As much as I love a moral dilemma, I also love a challenge, especially one in which I gain new perspectives and grow in understanding. I refer my post last week titled “A Moral Dilemma,” which engendered more commentary and response than I expected! One especially challenged me to examine how surface our thinking can…
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The morning after Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, I found myself reading a book review by Rich Yesselson in The Nation. Loomis is one of a number of contemporary scholars and thinkers whom I would call “pessimistic militants”—embodiments of the Gramscian cliché about pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will. The pessimistic militants study…
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First of all, “the Vote.” Who votes, how, when, where is getting unprecedented attention, in my opinion as a member of the League of Women Voters since 1968. Good. May the total electorate increase. Second, apologies to international readers. We are obsessed. Maybe you are at least interested. This week the BBC News Hour had…
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