Month: October 2018

I realized I’m angry about anger these days. We all know the drill when it comes to women: We are to suppress our anger – at least in public forums – or risk being vilified as hags, harpies, or harridans. We may shrug off these labels with a “sticks and stones…” retort, but think what…
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Has a certain ring to it, does it not? After All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day, observe All Survivor’s Day. Begun by the Survivor’s Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP), these nationwide and international witnesses will take place on Saturday, November 3. Most will be from 3 to 5 pm at cathedrals, but…
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As we protest and/or witness against the Church we have, I like to keep before us the Church we want: one, needless to say, with a multi-gendered approach to ministry and new possibilities for reaching people. I would like to start “small” by describing one way our small Eucharistic community does just this. This particular…
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CNN is not a station I normally watch except on election nights when MSNBC has a commercial. But I was intrigued when Stephen Colbert had Brooke Baldwin as a guest and she explained the special series she is hosting this fall. I knew there were many women running for office in the midterm elections, but…
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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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The question for this post is whether the image of nuns in popular culture prevents imagining women as priests. Or, is the image of priest so male that women cannot find a place in it? In our small faith community last week I was commenting on my experience of Rome a few years ago: nuns…
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On the Sunday after the report came out about the egregious sexual abuse perpetrated by the clergy on youth in Pennsylvania, our priest began Mass by lighting ten circles of ten candles for the victims, praying for them, and apologizing on behalf of the Church. In the days preceding that Sunday, he had sent a…
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Rebecca Traister has a new book that could describe us perfectly: Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger. We are good. Are we mad? Traister spoke this evening – Thursday – at the Free Library of Philadelphia, and I encourage you to go hear her on the book tour. I hope she has the…
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I’m not about being political, in a national politics sort of way, but it’s difficult to start this week without commenting on the content of the Kavanaugh hearings and what they said about the role of women in powerful institutions – most notably for our purposes here, our own Church- and how this role and…
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