Do you know that Google knows when your birthday is and sends you a cute little graphic of candles? At least they didn’t use a volcano. This is the date Mt. St. Helens erupted in 1980, and Kilauea is still going strong. Still, it’s disconcerting that they know that about you. But not as disconcerting…
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We are there every year and will be again this Saturday, May 19 at 9:30 a.m. Twelve or more of us. Definitely a minyan.  Apostles in so many ways. Saying our Mass. Led by an ordained woman priest. Outside the Cathedral of Saints Peter & Paul while an “officially ordained” ordination takes place inside. One…
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The “Optics” are over the top this week at Monday’s Met Gala. The bright reds in last week’s blog pale in comparison with the fashion statements in New York. But what are they saying? Four young Catholic writers have weighed in the Gala, which is an invitation-only event hosted by Anna Wintour of Vogue to…
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When I was in my “Protestant phase” as I call it, I attended an experimental progressive branch of a very conservative denomination, allowed only because it was supposed to bring in those, especially young, people disaffected by the traditional church and probably because it was, after all, the Sixties when many such fresh breaths were…
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“Optics” seems to be used more and more to describe “how things look,” which is what I guess from the context. Like any jargon, it’s annoying. So I’ll focus on it and find things I like the look of. What about those teachers? I am amazed by statewide teacher actions. Here in Pennsylvania, teachers in wealthy…
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Doesn’t this say it all? In a recent Letter to the Editor in the New York Times, a reader, commenting on a Ross Douthat take on Pope Francis as a way too progressive and, therefore, dangerous leader, included this anecdote: He and some of his fellow students at an all-male Catholic high school had noted…
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Exiled from my condo by asbestos remediation, I am sitting in my local Starbucks. My famous – or infamous – Starbucks. There are six marked and unmarked police cars outside. I recognize them from endless SEPA WOC demonstrations. No protesters yet. Today in here there are more white than black people, but nobody is denied…
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Imagine my surprise when I read about the women who were shooed out of the sumo wrestling ring in Japan when they tried to save a man’s life. What sounds like “news of the weird” is a serious story about traditions and how harmful they can be. It made me think of Roman Catholicism’s ban…
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Our Joan of Arc is inspiring me again this week (see March 31 post). Emma Gonzalez is quoted by Joan Walsh in The Nation: About the flurry of inadequate but promising gun-safety measures passed [into law] since Parkland, she says: “It feels like: they tried to take a giant step—and then they tripped. I’m not…
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In the admittedly progressive Catholic Church I attend, parishioners have, for years, stood as they and other people received communion and remained standing until all have received and the bread and wine has been put away. The narrative behind this action focused on our being Easter people rejoicing in the once whole, then broken bread…
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