Category: General

I raised my children with carrots only, no sticks. It’s not that I was so patient, kind, and lofty. I simply could not physically – or, a bit less successfully, emotionally – hurt someone. I was also a devotee of Dr. Spock’s assertion that hitting a child teaches the child that when you’re angry, hit.…
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When facing the major crises of our lives today, do you find yourself asking the same question over and over: But what can I do? Of course, organizations or groups working to resolve the crises often give us the same easy answer: “Donate”.  And we do. And perhaps that truly is what has the most…
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No matter what gender you are, how do you react to that statement? Much to the surprise of my female colleagues reading this statement with me for the first time, I found it insulting, supercilious, and patronizing. (They thought it was more or less true!) I, however, had immediately thought of Mary, mother of Jesus,…
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Back in the day – and that day would be sometime in the early 1970’s – my then-young family and I walked into a church community about which we had heard vague but enthusiastic praise. What we saw first amazed – and then completely captivated – us.  All around the worship space, we saw folding…
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“Am I able to trust that the tombs of my life are all gateways to resurrection?”                                                                                      – Sr. Joan Chittister The silence after Easter seems so different from the silence of Lent. We have just been through a terrible and magnificent drama. We have been through a period of wrenching, profound questioning followed by a…
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The only two books with broken bindings in my Catholic bookcase are my sister’s Baltimore Catechism and On Being a Christian by Hans Küng. Much used, the books reflect an ideological transition in the lifetime of the Vatican II generation. Küng’s was a gift from my late friend Mary Ellen Anderson; the binding is broken…
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Early in our marriage, my husband and I were reading side by side in bed when I burst into laughter. I was reading a book called Seeds of Hope, and he was reading one called The Coming Disaster. Talk about competing world views! We did manage to get through over twenty five years of rosy-colored-glasses…
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I love Molly Burhans’ story as told in the February 8 issue of The New Yorker (titled “Promised Land” by David Owen) because it shows, once again, what women, if they assume leadership in the Church, can do. I also love that she is a young Catholic woman with all the energy, hope – and…
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Well, I probably made a fool out of myself once again. It often happens when I am holding onto ideas, concepts, beliefs, opinions especially tightly as if they would break. And, of course, they do invariably break – out – of my mouth – for all, including me, to hear. Sometimes I feel all proud…
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As we take those glorious stretches of limbs so long compressed and cramped by wintery days and nights, we might as well stretch our minds as well. After all, it is Lent, and, alas, we still have work to do.  How about a stretch into the world of Dante? Yes, that Dante, he of the…
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