Category: Ministry of Prophetic Obedience

As Catholics, we might think that we know all there is to know about Mary. We wouldn’t have Christmas without her, after all. Mary’s backstory is sprinkled throughout the liturgical calendar, from the Immaculate Conception to the Annunciation to the Visitation, culminating on the day when she brings God into the world. Upon reflection, though,…
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[Editors’ note: A version of this article was first published on New Ways Ministry’s blog, Bondings 2.0, on July 22.] Last year, Pope Francis deemed July 22nd as a feast day for St. Mary Magdalene. But for years before his decree, advocates for women’s equality in the church have celebrated this “Apostle to the Apostles”…
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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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Our rules. Our rituals. The Catholic Church’s. Our society’s. Our own. How did we get so out of date. So stuck. So imprisoned. And, most importantly, how can we finally be free. I am currently reading John Banville’s Time Pieces: A Dublin Memoir – just in time for Saint Patrick’s Day, I suppose, although that…
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On a recent February Sunday at Mass, we celebrated Black History Month. Our pastor, who is Caucasian, donned colorful, African-inspired vestments. After the welcome and gathering, he went down to the aisle and called forth two of the parish’s African-American elders. A tall woman and tall man in African garb joined their hands over him…
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Here I am again – perhaps you are, too – going this way and that about the Church, about women and all genders and the Church, about…well, you know the drill. I hear the stories all the time about people, especially the young people we so desperately need, finding “church” elsewhere. This is particularly true…
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How rich the Church would be if only the blessed gifts outlined by poet, Jan Richardson below – and so many, many more that you could name – from all genders – were permitted. I’m not telling you here anything you don’t already know, but sometimes, I think, in this week of the celebration of…
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Staying ‘because it’s our church, too’ had come to feel like complicity by another name. And even staying for the Eucharist made me wonder at what point I had to stop letting the hierarchy use the real presence to excuse the inexcusable. Does Jesus ever feel like he’s being held hostage? (Melinda Henneberger’s “Why I…
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I’m still held in thrall by the “ministry of encouragement” and by the challenge to envision what a Church that includes full priesthood and leadership of women might look like. I know many have talked and written of possible visions, but I’d like to add one from a church already functioning. Of course, yes, it…
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When I started writing on this blog last fall, I asked Google Alerts to let me know when anything relevant to women’s ordination or women in the Catholic Church was posted online. In the beginning, I got articles from publications I never heard of before, and most of them opposed any change in the role…
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