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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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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This is my response to the list of Synod participants followed in short order by 21 new Cardinals late last week. I’m sure the Synod office had a lot to say about the first group, but I wonder if anyone other than Francis tapped the Cardinals on the shoulder. Impulsive, that list seems to me.…
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I have given so much space to supporting the Synod process, I think it’s about time to acknowledge that there are skeptics. Maybe that includes you, your friends and family, those you share liturgy with – lots of others. Who could not be a little skeptical after all we’ve been through? Joan Chittister opined a…
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The Synod process has created its own momentum, it seems. The publication of the Intstrumentum Laboris, which I began to discuss last week, has lured commentators into the arena, mostly online, I realize. Like me. But I’m not in the boys’ club. Ross Douthat in his New York Times newsletter uses the opportunity to blame…
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The big question: Does the tool work, or do we still have work to do? I’ve spent an intense few days reading the sixty pages of the Instrumentum Laboris, the “working tool” prepared for the 370 people who will be attending the Synod in October. My brief summary: Some of it, like the foreword, is…
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The panic was premature. They are talking about the Synod. Especially papal envoy Archbishop Christophe Pierre. Even USCCB President Broglio mentioned it. Bishop Cozzens, in explaining the Eucharistic Revival process in detail—2,400 parish point persons already! 25,000 registrants!—said it was kind of structured like a synod. (It’s actually structured like the corporation it is.) They’ve…
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Whenever Pope Francis goes into the hospital, the Catholic world goes on edge. I know exactly what’s happening to him because I had the same test a couple of months ago; fortunately, no surgery for me this time, unlike the Pope. Gerald O’Connell has the most complete examination of the Pope’s medical history, and Christopher…
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“Mother’s Day at a migrant shelter?” My attention is drawn to this story by its author, Rhina Guidos, Global Sisters Report’s Latin American correspondent, in an NCR Forward letter. “We know that you’re whole as you are?” Ariell Watson Simon writes for New Ways Ministry about the message a group of women religious wanted to…
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Thursday, my writing day, I celebrated my eightieth birthday. Without any alcohol but after the presence of dear friends and colleagues, I am feeling very mellow and so will write only briefly. Southeastern Pennsylvania Women’s Ordination Conference has celebrated Ordination Day outside the Cathedral for forty-three years, which is an odd referent to the year…
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