Inclusion
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God crashes Mary’s mundane Monday
When Gabriel appears to Mary, she is likely at her daily tasks, grinding grain, perhaps, or drawing water. God crashes into her mundane Monday. The Christmas story begins not in sacred spaces but in ordinary life—and that changes everything about how we understand faith.
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New Catholicism: Local realities, global communion
A new kind of catholicism is emerging: global in scope, yet respectful of the local. It honours complexity, listens deeply, and resists easy answers. The challenge ahead is to hold unity and diversity in tension with grace and humility.
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“Pray, pay, and obey”: the cry of the unheard
Agency is the feeling that one can make a difference. Its loss breeds despair. When members of the Church feel powerless, many simply opt out.
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Blessing love without betraying doctrine
The Church faces a defining question: can it bless love without betraying doctrine? What began as pastoral care now challenges the very grammar of Catholic worship — for in the Church, what is blessed becomes a revelation of belief.
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Go where it hurts
While walking along the Fuji River in 1684, poet Matsuo Bashō encountered a starving child, abandoned and crying. His act of compassion—and his haunting reflection—raise deep questions about suffering, God, and human response that still speak to today’s world.
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Ritual exile — modern stigma
Who do we cast out today—those we fear, those we blame, those who differ from us? The ancient story still asks how far we go to preserve purity, and what kind of holiness demands exclusion.
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Cardinal Sarah’s paper tiger
Cardinal Sarah’s opposition plays into a paper tiger: a strategy of threats and polarization that risks distracting from the patient work of cultural adjustment already underway in the Church. The danger is giving more oxygen to an issue already quietly shifting.
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Vatican to village
The Synodal vision must stretch from local communities to the highest Vatican offices. It’s not just about what happens in Rome—it’s about transformation everywhere the Church is present.
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The Sistine Chapel’s God isn’t enough today
Can a white, male God creating a white, male Adam still speak to today’s world? Jesus welcomed all—Jews and Gentiles, slaves and free, men and women. Diversity was always part of the divine plan. What if creation looked like all of us?
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