Author: Regina Bannan

October 14th, 2023

Balancing Act

My trainer likes to have us do tightrope walking – just on the floor – to improve our balance. I’m not very good at it, especially when we are to look left and right as we walk toe to heel. This comes to mind as I read the tremendous volume of articles being generated about…
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October 7th, 2023

Process or Parliament?

After watching the US House of Representatives self-destruct on Tuesday, I’ve had it with parliaments. I trust the processes of the synod much more.  That’s how I answer the first discussion question Commonweal poses about Shaun Blanchard’s article, Synodality & Catholic Amnesia: “If you had to describe the Synod on Synodality to someone who knew nothing about…
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September 30th, 2023

Synod Approaching

I’ve been nursing for a week my annoyance at a column by Michael Sean Winters in NCR in which he said: Miriam Duignan, a member of the leadership team at Women’s Ordination Worldwide, recently told NCR, “the synodal dialogue will be painfully incomplete and dishonest if it does not adequately address the widespread calls to open all ordained…
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September 23rd, 2023

Walk with Women Oct. 6

[Editors’ note: Learn more about Walk with Women actions in various cities around the globe, and learn how to plan your own, here.] Activism sometimes precludes writing, and it just snuck up this week. So instead of a blog post, I’ll share with you what we sent to the members of SEPA WOC in the…
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September 9th, 2023

One Month Out

Of course, you know what I mean. The Synod. I have been collecting articles but not writing about them, so today you get a smorgasbord of summaries that might set you searching for one or two that sparks your interest. Claire Giangrave for Religion News Service in NCR summarizes the state of the women’s ordination question by effectively…
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September 2nd, 2023

March on Minneapolis

“The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice,” Martin Luther King Jr.  Whenever the March on Washington comes up, I throw in that I marched on Minneapolis. These smaller marches around the country don’t usually get noticed, but this one did this year, on the 60th anniversary, August 28, 2023,  because I…
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August 26th, 2023

O, Canada!

Last week, I wrote about five – and ultimately, six – “non-bishop” delegates from the United States to the Synod. All were delegates to the North American Continental Assembly, as were four other non-bishops chosen from Canada. You probably remember that Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean Islands were made part of the Latin American…
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August 19th, 2023

Five Synod Delegates from the Margins

The last time I tumbled the bin of Synod delegates, I got two cardinals. This time, five “non-bishops,” as the USCCB characterizes them, popped out. These delegates from the United States convince me that Pope Francis had a hand in picking them. They all have characteristics that suggest they are on the margins in one…
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August 12th, 2023

RCWP=Activism?

One of my news sources of choice is The Nation magazine. I read it weekly because I find stories that are different from those trending even in the liberal side of the mainstream press. There’s a closer look and often a challenge to the status quo, whatever the subject. The subject is rarely religion, but…
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August 5th, 2023

Conference Impact

World Youth Day did not interest me until I thought about events that inspired me as a young person. I’ve been asked to comment elsewhere on the March on Washington, sixty years ago on August 28, 1963. I marched on Minneapolis with the National Federation of Catholic College Students, NFCCS. Does that organization even exist…
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