GSR Today - As a conscientious consumer, I’m aware that any brand new iPhone 6 or any computer is made possible only by inclusion of conflict minerals, that is, minerals extracted from the Congolese mines for which much blood has been shed in a near-constant battle for power between government and rebel troops. Furthermore, as Clare Nolan wrote for the Global Sisters Report on this week, the conditions in some of these mines are troublesome, to say the least.
Three Stats and a Map - If you’re in the U.S. and you turned on the news today to check up midterm election results, chances are your political affiliation influenced your news source. That’s probably not shocking information, but in a recent poll, the Pew Research Journalism Project found that in addition to choice of news source, both consistent liberals and conservatives have very particular media habits
The headlines are confusing. The questions they raise are even more so. For instance, we "empowered" women, right? After more than 2,000 years, the Western world finally woke up, in our time, to the astounding recognition that women, too, were human. Almost. By 1922, most English-speaking countries, including the United States, finally allowed women to vote for political leaders. The struggle was a fierce one, and churchmen and politicians alike considered that breakdown in society to be simply the beginning of the decline.
Catholic News Service
Four Dominican Sisters of St. Catherine of Siena are providing about 1,500 displaced Catholics with shelter, food, hygiene and water. The people fled from Mosul, Qaraqosh and Bartella, Christian towns in northern Iraq overrun by the Islamist extremists in early August. The tent camp was ravaged by cold rainy weather in late October, so families now shelter inside and around a youth sports center in a Christian enclave of Irbil.
by GSR Staff
" . . . This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children . . . . "
It’s not a new issue or an isolated one – but that doesn’t make dealing with aging populations, a lack of new sisters, spiraling costs and falling incomes any easier for religious congregations to deal with. For some, like the Sisters of Providence of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, Ind., the process of realigning their priorities to their resources prompted them to undertake a “refounding” – where they dedicated themselves to rebuilding the 175-year-old congregation from scratch. But other orders have looked at their resources and realized no realignment or refounding is possible. And for them, LCWR's Transitional Services is there to help.
by Jan Cebula
Power of Sisterhood exposes the richness of the multi-layered story of how women religious in America experienced the four phases of the apostolic visitation, 2009-2012. The various dimensions and facets offered by the sisters who contributed chapters deserve rereading and pondering. This is a story that could provide valuable insights applicable to other situations in the church.
When I began the Institute for Communal Contemplation and Dialogue (ICCD) I consciously chose to focus on contemplation as a communal experience. Having been influenced by Constance Fitzgerald’s article, “Impasse and the Dark Night,” I instinctively knew that our time in the evolutionary journey required of us ways to share our experience of contemplation and the wisdom and insights that emerge. I felt our historical time invites us to socialize our learnings so as to discover together the next steps on the journey.
From A Nun's Life podcasts - What you don't want to hear when telling people you might become a nun – "Maybe you're being brainwashed!" Discernment and opinions of others is a fitting topic for National Vocation Awareness Week.
by Jan Cebula
Power of Sisterhood: Women Religious Tell the Story of the Apostolic Visitation was initiated by a group of women religious who were the elected leaders of their communities during the Apostolic Visitation. They recognized the importance of capturing and telling the story from the perspective of the women who experienced it. In 2010, with the assistance of Margaret Cain McCarthy, Ph.D., they designed and conducted a qualitative and quantitative survey of presidents or major superiors whose communities had undergone the visitation. A review of the whole book can be read here.
