Several years ago I was a Senior Fellow at Woodstock Theological Center working on questions in science and religion. One day the program manager appeared at my door and asked if I wanted some boxes of notes that had been taking up space in his office. The notes happened to be those of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

For the past 10 years, Mary Alfonse Nguyen Ngoc Thanh, a former communist party member who converted to Catholicism, has been dedicated to persuading numberless pregnant women against having abortions at hospitals in Ho Chi Minh City. Working with sisters, she says that they have saved innumerable women and children over the last 10 years.

On Dec. 16, the Vatican will release the final report from its investigation of American women religious in 2010. Since the investigation, or apostolic visitation, was announced in 2009, it has been met with indignation from many U.S. Catholics. But while this specific visitation remains controversial, apostolic visitations in and of themselves are not uncommon. In fact, some scholars and theologians point to the New Testament and St. Paul’s visits to Asia Minor as their mode. In the Middle Ages, papal representatives routinely made visits to Catholics throughout Christendom.

On Oct. 8, VonDerrit Myers, who is African American, was shot and killed in the Shaw Neighborhood by a white off-duty St. Louis police officer, who was working security detail that evening for a private company employed by a residents’ association. His death and the subsequent protests eerily similar to the actions following the police shooting of Michael Brown in August in Ferguson, Mo., galvanized Shaw in unprecedented ways.

"O Sacred Presence, awaken in us an awareness of your abiding love."

GSR Today - One of the most basic – and effective – tools in modern medicine is also one of the most low-tech: Charting. But when it comes to treating Ebola, even something as simple as writing down medical treatment, symptoms and medicines is complicated, says the International Rescue Committee.

From A Nun's Life podcasts - Dec. 8 is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Ever wonder why people enshrine statues of Mary with bathtubs in the yard?

Sr. Mary Nguyen Thi Loan, from the Lovers of the Holy Cross of Vinh based in Nghe An Province in northern Vietnam, became the country’s oldest nun to take vows at the age of 83. She was among 52 nuns of the congregation taking first vows in early September. Sr. Loan endured decades of intense suffering caused by communist government policies against practicing religion, and she is widely admired for bravely defending her convent against the government’s confiscation.

"O Compassionate God, open our hearts and minds to prepare us for your son's coming."

GSR Today - What a strange mix of headlines we have this week, from the serious to the seriously disturbed, from people robbing women religious in real life to TV nuns smacking kids for giggles. But I’m not laughing.