There is a question of whether the gender-based imbalance of power in Catholicism that made the apostolic visitation and doctrinal investigation possible in the first place is a human construct subject to reform, or a divinely established order to be maintained despite cultural change. In approaching this question I have found a distinction between classicism and historical consciousness.

As the Nuns on the Bus tour prepared to move from Missouri to Kansas, about 150 residents from both states gathered Friday night at Community Christian Church in Kansas City, Missouri, for a town hall meeting moderated by Social Service Sr. Simone Campbell, executive director of NETWORK. "Unlike what the politicians usually do, this [town hall] is about all of us doing some work together to create the common good," Campbell said before inviting attendees to meet the people around them and to exchange views on the challenges and divisions in Kansas City.

Nuns on the Bus Blog 2015 - Nuns on the Bus had a busy weekend, and we're continuing to help you feel as though you're riding right along. Their latest stops have been in Kansas and Arkansas.

GSR Today - One of the most frustrating parts of disasters is not knowing how to help. The scale is sometimes so overwhelming, the need so great, the photos so staggering, that you wish you could somehow drop everything and go there and just do something. But you can’t. But I’ve covered and worked with non-profits long enough to know this with absolute certainty: Your donation, no mater how small, really does matter.

Some 500 Catholic activists from around the globe will converge on Philadelphia for a three-day conference Sept. 18-20 to press for women's rights in the church. They will meet one week before Pope Francis is set to step foot into the city. The U.S.-based Women's Ordination Conference (WOC) is hosting the Women's Ordination Worldwide meeting. The Women's Ordination Conference formed 40 years back, in 1975, after a group of women's ordination advocates met in Detroit. Women's Ordination Worldwide (WOW), an assembly of international groups supporting women's ordination, formed in 1996; the U.S. group is a member.

Homemade granola and a bilingual greeting welcomed the Nuns on the Bus on their second stop in a 13-city tour of the U.S. centered on bridging divides and transforming the nation's political discourse and direction. After hearing of economic and racial injustices Thursday in St. Louis, the seven women religious on the bus stopped outside St. Anthony Parish in north Kansas City on Friday, Sept. 11, where a crowd approaching 100 people shouted "Welcome, sisters!" in unison but in their native languages. St. Anthony pastor Fr. Paul Turner told the crowd — in English and Spanish — that the church was built in the 1920s largely by Italian immigrant families.

Being Sister Tracy calls me to something challenging and extraordinary. What do you think of when you hear the word “sister?” A sister is family, a confidant perhaps, someone who walks with. Throughout history, women religious have been close to the people, walking beside them through joys and sorrows.

GSR Today - Nuns on the Bus will kick off their 2015 bus tour at the 2-acre Kiener Plaza in St. Louis today at 10 a.m. CDT. Global Sisters Report is here for the tour launch (this post is being written from Busch Stadium, I kid you not), and I’ll be tweeting and reporting this morning to keep you up to date.

“There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.”

From A Nun's Life podcasts - How can the Internet connect you to religious life? For one, it  can foster an immediate sense of relationship.