Remember December 2020? I was so grateful to see my daughter after a nine-month absence. She carefully quarantined herself for about a week, until we felt relaxed enough for her to eat in the same room with us.
We knew vaccines were about ready to be offered, promising the end…
By Celia Wexler
If we ever needed a metaphor for the rending of the national soul, yesterday’s riot provided it. The U.S. Capitol is a living, breathing, place. Built in part by slaves, it is the repository of our best instincts and some of our worst failures. It is where…
After so many reports of so many immigrant detainees being exposed to COVID-19 in cramped and unsafe quarters, and not being given the proper medical care, the public may not want to hear any more. But even the most jaded among us should be shocked by the reports this week…
Last December, Customs and Border Patrol agents in San Diego barred doctors from giving flu shots to children in detention centers. The shots, doctors said, would prevent even more deaths for kids in these cramped, disease-prone places.
The reason they refused to vaccinate, border officials said last year, was that…
Among the few possessions I inherited from my grandmother is a sepia-toned picture of her and my grandfather, taken a few years after they had left Italy and settled in a small town in upstate New York.
My grandmother looks quietly elegant in her ostrich-plumed hat. She holds an infant…
I’m happy that US Catholic bishops, following the lead of Pope Francis, have condemned the separation of families seeking asylum in the United States, and the White House’s harsh “zero-tolerance” towards immigrants.
But talk is cheap. Particularly when the values the US bishops now publicly cherish were largely invisible during…
When I was pregnant with my daughter 30 years ago, I declined amniocentesis, which could have predicted developmental disabilities or other health problems. I did that partly because the test could result in a miscarriage, and partly because, as a practicing Catholic, I did not know whether I could handle…
Pope Francis and Me: After Five Years, the Pope Mystifies and Disappoints
In late 2012, I had reached a fork in the road as a Catholic feminist. I faced a misogynist church led by a stern pope whose Vatican scolded nuns for their “radical feminist” ideas, meaning that, unlike America’s…
On February 23, two Catholic feminist scholars debated whether the Catholic Church is anti-woman. To me that’s akin to debating whether the Inquisition was anti-Semitic, but I was willing to suspend my disbelief to consider both sides of the discussion. The debate took place at the Aquinas Institute for Catholic…
It used to be that blogging for The Huffington Post was special. It was like being invited to a large cocktail party where lots of ideas were discussed by literate people. Not everyone was invited. You had to contact an editor and demonstrate your qualifications.
And even after getting into…
