Copy Desk Daily, Jan. 21, 2020

by Teresa Malcolm

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Our team of copy editors reads and posts most of what you see on the websites for National Catholic Reporter, Global Sisters Report and EarthBeat. The Copy Desk Daily highlights recommended news and opinion articles that have crossed our desks on their way to you.

As we start off this election year, activists are looking to make their voices heard. For climate organizers, 2020 is the year to mobilize — with young people in the lead. The year will see the 50th anniversary of Earth Day and the fifth anniversary of Laudato Si', milestones that Catholic Climate Covenant is honoring with the launch of its intergenerational "U.S. Catholic Climate Project.”

In another corner of environmental action, Sr. Mary Bilderback donned her purple "Mercy for Justice" T-shirt and lent her support to Clean Ocean Action at a public hearing on offshore drilling. The biologist and GSR columnist ruminates on the life threatened within the astonished abyss of the capital letter O of a federal logo.

The climate is not the only issue drawing the attention of social justice advocates who see the "need to challenge some of our comforts, some of our privileges, and maybe risk some of our status with our own fellow Catholics, and for our own access to political leadership": NCR intern Sarah Salvadore writes about how Catholic immigration activists step up in battle against Trump policies, in actions that have included civil disobedience and arrests.

Last week's kerfuffle over Pope Benedict XVI's contribution to a book on celibacy, apparently at ideological odds with Pope Francis, stirred historical memories of when the Catholic Church had more than one claimant to papal authority. But thinking about the Western Schism gave Jamie Manson an idea: Women need to be the church's new anti-pope.

St. Teresa of Avila famously said that Christ has no body on earth but yours — and that presence of God in all of us is a powerful reason to recognize the oneness of creation, whatever our differences. Mark Etling meditates on the Real Presence in this Soul Seeing column.

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