Author name: Marie Venner

Reports from synodal gatherings on big questions will be due in 2025: October 2024 gathering will mainly focus on how to be a synodal church in mission

Don’t expect definitive answers at the end of the Synod’s final October session says Gerald O’Connell March 14, 2024 While the second and final session of the Synod on Synodality will conclude at the end of October 2024, Catholics should not expect major pronouncements on the particular issues raised during the first session and included […]

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Events this next week and a half. Do you know about the Forest Charter or Charter of the Commons and why it matters today?

14 – International Day of Action for Rivers, with the theme “Water for All” – This year’s theme focuses on “Water for All”. Whether your community is tackling water rights, clean water access, fighting against dams, water grabs, and water privatization or removing dams and restoring rivers and fish migration, we know water is life and is

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French Catholics and dioceses continue to reflect on themes from the Synod on synodality

By Charlotte Gambert (in Paris) | France March 12, 2024, La Croix Announcements regarding the synodal process have been made in the dioceses, yet the level of effort put into these announcements varies by location, leading to confusion among some Catholics in France. The famed Institut Catholique in Paris (ICP) has launched a series of

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Catholics, socialists and disability advocates all have concerns about Ireland’s proposed family amendments

Kevin Hargaden March 07, 2024 in America (Jesuit) magazine, Facebook, Twitter, Email Children place Easter lilies on a lawn during an event in Dublin on March 15, 2020. (CNS photo/Brian Lawless, Reuters) Just days after French legislators affirmed a constitutional right to abortion, Irish citizens will go to the polls on March 8 to consider

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Belgian Bishops’ Conference calls for a female diaconate and opening the ordained priesthood to married men – see full text of their letter, translated here

Pursuing “the very meaning of the Synod, which is a space for dialogue” the Catholic bishops of Belgium have issued a letter proposing that the Church establish a female diaconate and allow married men to be ordained to the presbyterate. The bishops’ 4-page letter to all dioceses is to promote discussion on these two ministerial topics

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Recognizing our racism and getting better – results of a Jesuit study

From the Black Catholic Messenger, Feb 2024, by Kevin Tachie. Ed. — Our thanks to Spirit Unbounded speaker and BCM co-founder Nate Tinner-Williams, a multi-talented former seminarian, still discerning his vocation and what it is right now, as he and we continue to work for the better world that is possible. This overview and reflection

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Synodal path must continue in Germany – updateGerman bishops halt move toward establishing a Synodal Council on the German Synodal Path at Vatican’s request

For earlier joint statement of the President of the German Bishops Conference and the President of German Lay Catholics on the Synodal Way, please see the preface further down in this post and English translations of all German Synodal Way documents here:https://www.synodalerweg.de/fileadmin/Synodalerweg/Dokumente_Reden_Beitraege/beschluesse-broschueren/Englisch/Synodaler-Weg-EN-Decisions.pdf. Sources: CNA, La Croix, The Synodal Times, ZdK press release, and provided comments.

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Cynicism is also a spiritual problem, a deep-seated assumption of already knowing and having nothing to learn from each other

…It is the consequence of the deep-seated assumption of already knowing, of having nothing to learn from the Church, that is, from brothers and sisters in the faith, and not even from the pope. Or, even worse, it comes from the nihilistic assumption that it is impossible to know the truth or that it does

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“To launch new processes by bearing witness, guided by the Holy Spirit, to another way of being church and by designing a new ways of communicating”

The Church is/was already a “net – a network”, before the advent of the “internet”. The challenge today “is to be fully present” where people live and to build real relationships. The digital world is part of this context where we live and meet. Communicating faith, he stressed, is never simply transmitting information. It is

“To launch new processes by bearing witness, guided by the Holy Spirit, to another way of being church and by designing a new ways of communicating” Read More »

“That which is unmoved and unmoving is not spiritual, it is dead! To be spiritual is to be alive, to be capable of moving and responding to movement. Since the Spirit moves, that which does not move would seem to lack the presence of the Spirit.”

By John Barnes, a doctoral candidate in systematic theology at Fordham University. His primary research interests lie at the intersections of Black religion and culture, pneumatology and Christology. His forthcoming dissertation, “Like the Rushing of a Mighty Wind: Embodiment, Being and the Construction of a Black Diasporic Pneumatology,” engages notions of spirit as the point

“That which is unmoved and unmoving is not spiritual, it is dead! To be spiritual is to be alive, to be capable of moving and responding to movement. Since the Spirit moves, that which does not move would seem to lack the presence of the Spirit.” Read More »