Shannon Brinkley Portillo: I've seen black women say abortion rights isn't important in our day-to-day reality, and be shouted down and called stupid, short sighted. Well, in American history, the right to abortion HASN'T been a huge problem for black women; our problem has been the opposite, right to want, have and mother our children. Read more
I just found out today that a documentary about my hometown is going to be aired on POV on PBS at 10 PM tonight, June 17th. The name of the documentary is Roll Red Roll, and it’s about the Big Red rape case. The Steubenville Big Red gang rape happened just about a year after my own birth rape in Steubenville. I had to live through the trauma over and over again as I watched my neighbors rallying around rapists,... Read more
By Jaime Mahler To where shall our money go? If you have followed some of the recent scandal news that broke this week, involving bishops, money and the statute of limitations, you may find the reaction to that news surprising. Some were angered, some questioned why spend money on something like that and then some found themselves asking why people wait so long to go to authorities. In the Catholic Church, authority is found in a hierarchical structure: the pope,... Read more
We’ve been talking about sexual abuse and harassment in the Church for quite some time now; we’ve also been discussing modesty on and off. Interestingly enough, I just yesterday found out that my Disqus spam filter randomly decided on a few words that it would never tolerate to be published in my comment box, and any word pertaining to sex was on the forbidden list. I just found the giant collection of comments yesterday– people will say the word “sex”... Read more
What do you do when the world seems so terrible and there is no love to be found? You put love into it. That’s something I firmly believe. Right now I have an urgent request for my readers, a way we can counter hate with love right now and perform a Work of Mercy. My friends at Immigrant Families Together have drawn my attention to a group called Team Brownsville, which meets the immediate needs of immigrants seeking asylum at... Read more
I am watching the Twitter feed of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the USCCB, as they conduct their 2019 General Assembly in Baltimore. I am talking back to the tweets, as one does, but I can’t get my answers down to the Twitter word limit. I’ll have to write them here. 50% of Catholics 30 and younger have left the Church. 1 out of 6 millennials in the US is a former Catholic. For every 1 joining, 6.45... Read more
People will make a mountain out of any molehill, particularly if the molehill is fat and wearing leggings. Yesterday, the Telegraph published a curious op ed by a real sourpuss named Tanya Gold, entitled “Obese Mannequins are Selling Women a Dangerous Lie.” The op ed concerns Nike’s line of plus-sized workout clothing, with a plus-sized mannequin to promote it– the offending mannequin is depicted in the article, wearing black leggings and a sports bra to match, stretching as if it’s... Read more
The dust is still settling in the case of the priest embarrassing a woman at Mass which I wrote about earlier this week. The uproar was so great on Twitter that the priest who tweeted about it deleted his account and wrote a self-pitying screed for The Wanderer claiming he’d been persecuted. Everyone has an opinion and a story to tell. By and large, people were not surprised at the story of a priest humiliating a woman in... Read more
I have often been to Mass in the Roman Catholic diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, which covers the entire state of West Virginia. The diocese’s borders are identical with the state borders– the bishop of Wheeling-Charleston is the bishop of the Mountain State. I’ve grown to love some of the parishes there. West Virginia has been ranked the ninth poorest state in our country, based on household income. More than one in four of the children in West Virginia live in poverty. And, since... Read more
I am new to Catholic Twitter, and not sure I like it. Every day there seems to be a new fight. But I’m going to have to jump into the ring swinging on this latest kerfuffle: a priest who humiliated a woman at Mass, and then another priest tweeted not in her defense, but in warning to women everywhere not to make priests do that to them again. Father Kevin M. Cusick, LCDR, wrote: “Ladies, a priest I know was... Read more
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