Catholic Church
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Habemus Papam: Hopes for Pope Leo XIV and Catholic Social Teaching
If all I knew about the new pope was this choice of name, based on that alone I could firmly say that I am excited to see the writings that come out of this papacy. Continue reading
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Learning from History: What Can We Do Without the Eucharist?
One of the historical examples that we can look to during this time is the community around the nuns at Port-Royal in seventeenth-century France. Continue reading
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I Didn’t Have High Hopes
I wasn’t imagining that an apostolic exhortation would instantly permit women to be ordained deacons in the Roman Catholic Church. I trust the diaconate for women will unfold in millimeters, but the remote possibility of it in fact happening in my… Continue reading
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Mainstreaming Women’s Ministries
Kate McElwee and Katie Lacz We know the story – most recently repeated and discussed in ham-handed fashion at the USCCB meeting this month – that the Catholic Church in the U.S. is hemorrhaging people, including young people, and cannot… Continue reading
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Restoration: Women, the Diaconate and My 3-year Prayer
For three years I’ve been sowing prayers. Spreading the desire of my heart, grafting a hope for the church into other people’s prayer lives. It’s a prayer for women to be seen on altars throughout the world – sharing of… Continue reading
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The Sex Abuse Crisis in the Catholic Church: What Do We Know and How Can We Continue from Here?
I have received several requests for a copy of the talk I gave in our department as an introduction to an event for undergraduates in which faculty members discussed how they responded to the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic… Continue reading
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Confessing Our Vicious History: White Catholics and Violence Against Black Churches
Let us atone for the corporate sins of our past so that we may better diagnose the racial sins of our present. Let us honor black churches like Charleston Emanuel AME as true bearers of the gospel so that we… Continue reading
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Telling Tales: Ferguson and the Church
In recent weeks, many white people have relied on these stories to make sense of and defend themselves against the events in Ferguson and New York. Above all, these stories of white supremacy allow white people to remain undisturbed and… Continue reading
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Hope in the Storm-Tossed Church
This is a long post—about twice the length of the papers my students recently wrote, in fact. But it’s about what sustains me through the difficulties of being a critical Catholic woman, and I hope it’s helpful to some of… Continue reading