Author: Regina Bannan

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.…
Read more

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…
Read more

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…
Read more

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…
Read more

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…
Read more

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…
Read more

“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…
Read more

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…
Read more

Most people in the US reading this headline this week might think of a certain jury verdict in New York City. I think of the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul of New York. They announced April 27 that their congregation is on a “path to completion.”  I am shocked. Everybody knows that…
Read more

Oh, our dear, impulsive Pope. I have long felt that if women could get Francis’ ear, we would see change. I wonder who got to him about women voting at the Synod. Maybe he saw the photo of the German Benedictines from 2018, and was reminded of the scandal of sisters who lead religious orders…
Read more