What is life like as a Catholic Sister today?
Come and See at the Sisters of Providence of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, Indiana’s Come and See weekend retreat Oct. 14-16, 2022. Free and open to single, Catholic women ages 18-42. Sign up or learn more at ComeandSee.SistersofProvidence.org or contact Sister Joni Luna at 361-500-9505 or jluna@spsmw.org
An Evening with Dr. Carolyn Woo
Wednesday, July 27, 2022, at 6 p.m. Central Time
(7 p.m. Eastern Time)
Join us for a virtual gathering with Carolyn Woo, PhD, to discuss her new book, Rising: Learning from Women’s Leadership in Catholic Ministries.
Carolyn is the retired President and CEO of Catholic Relief Services. Her conversation partner will be Kimberly Baker, PhD, faculty member at Saint Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology.
Participants will have the opportunity to submit questions and comments for the discussion.
To RSVP and receive the Zoom link, email info@womenofthechurch.org by Monday, July 25th.
Hosted by Women of the Church.
For the past two weeks, we have heard readings, unique to John’s Gospel, that focus on unnamed people whose initial encounters with Jesus lead them to believe in him. This Sunday, however, John records the faithfulness of Jesus’ friends, Martha and Mary, whose brother Lazarus has recently died. Interpreters often focus on the raising of Lazarus and its obvious parallels to Jesus’ resurrection. But Martha and Mary are at the center of this story. They provide us with another biblical example of women as preachers and steadfast believers in Christ.
The sisters Martha and Mary are friends of Jesus who believe that he is the Messiah. In the next chapter, it is Mary who anoints Jesus with fragrant, expensive oil in preparation for his burial (Jn 12:1-8). When their brother becomes ill, Martha and Mary appeal to Jesus, trusting that he has the power to heal. Jesus is unresponsive because he knows that Lazarus’s death will be “for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it” (Jn 11:4). Raising Lazarus from the dead is the culmination of the powerful signs Jesus performs in the Gospel of John.
Click here to continue reading this article by Jaime L. Waters from americamagazine.org.
When Lent arrives each year, I find myself in conversations about fasting with other Catholic women. We exchange plans for our seasonal food abstinence — small meals and no meat on Fridays, often accompanied by a fast from sweets, or alcohol, or snacking between meals.
Then, inevitably, someone voices what many of us have privately considered: “Hopefully this will help me lose another few pounds.”
Such admissions are often accompanied by some self-deprecating acknowledgement that weight loss is not supposed to be the goal of our seasonal penance. Nevertheless, sympathetic nods and similar confessions arise in response. Year after year, these conversations evince a tension between our perceptions of what fasting ought to be and our experience of it as Catholic women in the contemporary United States.
These conversations inspired my search for resources aimed at helping Catholic women fast in a setting where we face relentless pressures to conform to society’s young, white, able-bodied, effortless, slender ideal.
Click here to continue reading this article by Jessica Coblentz.
It took me a long time to believe that God was not disappointed with my body. It took me even longer to learn that Ash Wednesday was not my yearly diet launch date, that Lent was not a time for me to give all my food-related desires to God and come out the other end a better person, slimmer and with more self-discipline.
Unfortunately, Lent is the time of year where my Catholic faith threatens to derail my hard-fought healing—a years-long process of learning to accept my large body and to realign my relationship with food amid an eating disorder diagnosis. The whole “give up sugar and lose weight during Lent” impulse? That is the impulse of diet culture, and it is a problem when it surreptitiously slides into our churches unchecked.
Diet culture is the miasma of social expectations that to be considered “good,” a body must be trim and healthy. It is a message that saturates the cultural fabric, and no matter where I go, I witness its demands—in commercials, in online interactions, in the harsh whisper of my inner critic—that my very large body is a disappointment to God and that I need to change it. I am not even safe in church.
Click here to continue reading this article by Amanda Martinez Beck.
We are delighted to announce that we have confirmed the keynote speakers for our next conference on November 7, 2020:
Pope Francis on Friday marked International Women’s Day, stressing the “irreplaceable contribution of women in building a world that can be a home for all,” through their efforts toward peace and love. “Women make the world beautiful, they protect it and keep it alive.” “They bring the grace of renewal, the embrace of inclusion, and the courage to give of oneself,” he told some 40 representatives of the American Jewish Committee who met him in the Vatican.
