This is my last column this year, so I am reflecting on what 2018 means to the politics of women in the Catholic church, which I have made my “beat” on this blog. It will be idiosyncratic, the first definition of which is “quirky.” Yep, that’s me. The 101 women who will be serving in…
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Recently, on a visit to Texas, I attended a traditional Catholic Church. It was large and unpretentiously beautiful. The congregation was extremely diverse: young, old, singles, couples, and lots of families of Asian, Hispanic, African-American as well as European-American origin. People were welcoming and seemed happy to be there. The Mass itself was conservative, with…
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Sex abuse. I have the image of everybody adjusting the focus of his or her own camera to see more clearly a solution to one aspect of the crisis: bishops who abuse or cover up. At the end of the USCCB meeting, Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago proposed that metropolitans (archbishops with rarely-used authority over…
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I have John Marchese of the Quixote Center to thank for these words of introduction and closing, and the incomparable Nikki Giovanni for the poem. “Silence sometimes offers a window into the truth of the world around us – who and what can be heard and who or what is being silenced or oppressed,” John…
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What were you thinking about last Sunday, the feast of Christ the King? It is hard to get that Palm Sunday earworm out of my head, but our celebrant Joe Sannino introduced a new concept: Christ the friend. You may know that I belong to a small faith community, now an intentional Eucharistic community after…
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Why does religion still matter?  Why does it still have a hold on people?  Why do people stay in and with the Church in an age in which reason, secularism, and materialism have become the new enchantments? At a recent meeting of Catholics Organized for Renewal (COR) in San Antonio, Texas, Michele Dillon, Ph.D. Professor…
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In contrast to their blathering around the sex abuse crisis, the USCCB did approve “open wide our hearts: the enduring call to love. a pastoral letter against racism,” oddly titled in lower case. It’s pretty good. As a young person, I was deeply inspired by the bishops’ 1958 pastoral on the same subject. I took…
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“It’s not about passing the torch.  It’s about firing up another’s torch so there can be more light for all.” I’m quoting one of the mentors in Call to Action’s 20/30 Project paraphrasing part of a speech by Gloria Steinem to explain why this particular mentor chose to become a guide, champion, and support for…
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It is hard to understand how Pope Francis can both condemn clericalism and override the American bishops’ attempt to establish a lay review board to oversee their own actions on sex abuse. Or appoint Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta to organize the world meeting on abuse prevention in February as part of a new role…
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“Where do you see yourself in five years?” If my 19-year-old self were to look into a crystal ball and see where I was now, she would see someone very different than the woman she was on the path to becoming. Flash back to 2013, before the Trump administration took office, before the “Me Too”…
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