The New York Times last Sunday featured “The Sisters Project” about the “Nuns and Nones,” previously reported on by the NCR. , I mention the latter only to give us some insight into what is considered news by the broader journalistic community. This project is so hopeful: young, self-identified non-religious people live in convents where…
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Regina Bannan in The Table has given us enlightening, witty, and profound insights into James Carroll’s “To Save the Church, Dismantle the Priesthood” article in The Atlantic. Humbly, I’d like to add a progressive (I hope!) Catholic layperson’s reaction to part of the article as well. Often criticism articles like Carroll’s focus on analyzing problems,…
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This week my attention is drawn to the different ways ordained women understand their ministry. My first inspiration is a response in The Atlantic to the James Carroll piece that I wrote about last week. Susan Bigelow Reynolds writes of her experience in graduate school when she lived in a Catholic rectory (which the priests…
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The other week I attended a one man play called How I Learned What I Learned. Autobiographical, the play’s “one man” was the playwright himself, and the drama focused on his growing up in one of the poorest neighborhoods of racially divided Pittsburgh. He took us on a journey through his life, loves, poetic and…
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Perhaps with a side of reproductive rights? What a week for causes dear to us! Suddenly the things we talk about in our impassioned conversations are on the front pages, one in The Atlantic, no less. So I’ll go there first. Are we working so hard to get ordained into something that ought to be…
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This started out as a reflection on Mother’s Day. I had begun thinking about the Church as Mother, and my own role as a mother, and was just piecing a lot of those thoughts together when I began to process the anti-abortion laws currently being voted on and passed in several states in the U.S.…
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At the first Roman Catholic Women Priests ordinations on the St. Lawrence River in Gananoque, Quebec, I was so happy. But when the big moment came, all the news photographers there stood up and got their pictures, totally blocking my view. I thought of the irony of it all – I had been working for…
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We know who they are! They are even “on parade” on Holy Thursday and Ordination Day at the Cathedral of Saints Peter & Paul in Philadelphia! They censor our rituals; they kill the joy of our celebrations by denying access, based solely on gender, to ministry and, most egregiously, to a holy Sacrament. They do…
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Why is it that only the “no” votes matter? That change can be put off because not everybody agrees? Not to decide is to decide, the mantra of Pope Francis when it comes to us. Once again, women are revealed as the third rail of the church. You’ll be executed if you touch it, so…
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A church community in Greenwich Village in New York City recently hosted an art installation. One of the “pieces” was a makeshift confessional. It was painted white and softly curtained. A screen cutout in decorated shapes both beautifully welcomed and separated speaker and listener. Those entering were not there to “confess” in any traditional sense.…
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