Our democracy is in need of some intensive tender loving care. As citizens, we have a responsibility to vote according to our informed conscience, but our civic responsibility cannot end there. On a good day, we the people are responsible for establishing justice, insuring domestic tranquility, providing for the common defense, promoting the general welfare, and securing the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity.

A survey released November 10 by the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious found a continued trend in young women choosing religious life, with more than 900 sisters currently in initial formation. "Religious life is alive and well in the United States," said Sister of Life Mother Mary Agnes Donovan, chair of CMSWR.

"When we build, let us think that we build forever. Let it not be for present delight nor for our use alone. Let it be such work as our descendants will look upon with praise and thanksgiving in their hearts."

Sr. Janet Lehmann directs the nursing program of the University of Notre Dame Haiti's Jacmel campus, a program she says is helping build a foundation for Haiti, particularly as it recovers from Hurricane Matthew.

After efforts to persuade the Catholic church in India to deal with sexual abuse of women by clergy, and upset over the church's slow progress, a group of Christian women, mostly Catholics, announced steps for addressing the issue on their own. "We should move outside the church to seek answers to abuse cases. We should treat this problem as a crime and take recourse to the law," said Astrid Lobo Gajiwala, a lay woman theologian.

Men have been dominant as recipients, interpreters and transmitters of divine messages, while women have largely remained passive receivers of teachings and ardent practitioners of religious rituals. Attitudes developed around patriarchal interpretations of religious belief have defined and shaped the social and cultural contexts of Indian women resulting in their disempowerment and second-class status. In India, where politics uses religion as a tool to manipulate the masses, women bear the brunt of the consequences of cultural attitudes and the impact of religion and politics.

"Embrace the pace at which Earth does things."

Despite a 16-month campaign, Trump's concrete policy proposals still leave much to the imagination for those working in social justice ministries, but women religious share worries for the poor, immigrants and refugees, and women.

Notes from the Field - After a long flight from Washington, D.C., with a stopover in Dubai, and an 8-hour drive from the capital Addis Ababa, I finally arrived in the southern city of Dilla, Ethiopia, where I was going to spend the next five to six months. Dilla is one of four communities that the Salesian Sisters have in this country.