American Women Religious: Off the Barricades, Into the Boardroom?
A good part of the media played up the Vatican’s recent Apostolic Visitation of American women religious like the sisters’ gallant last stand against overwhelming force. They were the Communards of...
View ArticleSwansong for St. Martin of Tours, the Bronx
On Friday, the New York Times ran a feature article on St. Martin of Tours, a Bronx elementary school that closed the previous Wednesday after a run of 86 years. In the words of the Times, St. Martin’s...
View ArticleMy Nunophobia
I have never known a habited nun. Oh, I know they’re out there. I’ve seen them. While serving as a scullery maid on retreat, I ladled bacon and eggs onto the paper plate of a Poor Clare. In the 1960s,...
View ArticleTo the Pit Crew on My Faith Journey
So I check Facebook this morning and see that Joanne McPortland has posted a link. I click it and discover she’s written a piece listing all the people who’ve distinguished themselves as guides and...
View ArticleMy Mother: Muse and Proxy Fighter
Last Thursday at the office, right in the middle of her work day, my mother received an urgent phone call. “Hey, Mom,” the caller began. “I know you’re busy running the ESOL program and compiling that...
View ArticleHow It Feels to Be Received Like Christ
The first thing I noticed about the vocational discernment retreat was the median age of the guests, which I estimated at 65. Then I saw the girl in the wheelchair. I couldn’t put a name to her...
View ArticleNew Arab Saints: A Fountain of Virtue to the Thirsty
The careful reader will note something forlorn in the words “Pope Francis presided over the canonizations…before a congregation of tens of thousands of people.” Josemaria Escriva’s canonization drew a...
View ArticleSt. Maximilian and the Two Crowns
A couple of my readers reminded me that yesterday was the feast day of St. Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish Franciscan who earned the martyr’s palm in an Auschwitz starvation bunker. At first I protested...
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