Copy Desk Daily, July 8, 2020

Black Catholic women: voice embodied by Kathleen Dorsey Bellow of the Institute for Black Catholic Studies is the first of three commentaries that will be featured by NCR. "Let us today be open to the words of three Black women scholar-activists as they share their experience and perspective on these times," C. Vanessa White writes in her introduction to the series. "Their response to the racism evident in our country and in the global world is rooted in their experience of struggle and spirit." What insights can they give us?

"We're taught to love everyone as Catholics, and Columbus obviously did not do that," says Ella Schultz, who is among a few challenging the name of her alma mater, Columbus Catholic High School in small-town Marshfield, Wisconsin. Institutions bearing the name of St. Junípero Serra are being similarly challenged amid the current national reckoning on racism: Catholic schools face questions over connections to Columbus, Serra.

Fr. Daniel Horan, a Franciscan like Serra, is not settled in his opinions on removing statues. But he wonders if the Catholic social principle of the preferential option for the poor might mean the preferential option for the removal of statues. "I think we need to ask some tough questions. What is gained by having such public monuments? What is lost in their absence?"

In her new book, The Meal that Reconnects, Sr. Mary E. McGann interweaves eucharistic practice with social, economic and ecological realities. Marian Ronan reviews this timely work of theology on the Eucharist and the global food crisis that has been made plain by the coronavirus pandemic.

Viewing the United States as an exceptional country, an example to the world, always took some degree of naiveté and ignoring our sins. And now, American exceptionalism needs a reboot, writes Jesuit Fr. Tom Reese.

"As I age, I know how vitally important it is to let people know that they've helped me grow," says Sr. Jane Marie Bradish. Her GSR column does just that in gratitude for Sr. Joan Chittister: how a book and keynote led to friendship.

Featuring congregational leaders in Europe and the United States, two webinars offer a broader vision of religious life in the West. Sr. Joyce Meyer, GSR's liaison to women religious outside of the U.S., tuned in to the conversations.

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