GSR Today - The world is a messy, broken place full of messy, broken people; it’s unreasonable to expect perfection from every group and/or movement. But that doesn’t mean we should be complacent, that we shouldn’t use our perspectives and experiences to help others grow in their understanding of the world. 

Most attention by national news organizations has focused on the detention of immigrant children within the U.S. and the religious congregations and organizations that have offered to provide for their needs in lieu of detention. Like the villagers in the parable, at this meeting and another just across the border in Juarez, Mexico, we began to explore what is happening further upstream and how to respond. Hermanos en el Camino, a refuge for undocumented Central American immigrants in Ixtepec, Oaxaca, was founded by Fr. Alejandro Solalinde in 2007. Over the years thousands of refugees have passed through the shelter which is located along the tracks that the train known as “La Bestia” traverses to the north.

"Trust in the slow work of God."

Though she had been a well-known partier in her own times, St. Teresa of Avila would likely raise her dark eyebrows in surprise. This year, all over the world, people have been celebrating the 500th anniversary of her birth on March 28, 1515. Birthday festivities for her certainly make Catholic sense. Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda y Ahumada was a profoundly influential Spanish mystic, a Carmelite reformer, the first woman doctor of the church, and the author of best-selling spiritual classics, including her masterpiece, The Interior Castle (1577). Nonetheless, some wonder what a 16th-century mystic can say to 21st-century people of faith.

The idea of a long-dead monk having a 100th birthday party is intriguing but not fully surprising when the monk in question is Thomas Merton (1915-1968), arguably America’s most famous monk. There are many such “parties” going on this year, in forms such as retreats, theological symposia, publications, films, academic conferences, liturgical celebrations, art exhibits and public talks. An Internet search reveals events happening on every continent except Africa.

GSR Today - I am not the person to come to for spiritual or theological advice. Many hundreds of thousands of words have already been written, by much more qualified people than I, about Pope Francis’s encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si'. But I spent some time recently in northern Michigan, which is a beautiful place.

Notes from the Field - A casa hogar is a children’s home. These types of institutions are incredibly common in Honduras and Central America, at large. They come in all shapes, sizes and types. Here in San Pedro Sula, most casa hogares are associated with a church or school. At Escuela María Mazzarello, the casa hogar has been in existence for 15 years, but in the past five years it has seriously begun to evolve. 

I have laughed more in the past two years than almost any other time in my life. Coincidentally, it has also been two years since I entered my religious community. When I first began spending time with sisters, one thing surprised me: how much they laughed. Sure, they possessed a number of other attractive qualities, like prayerfulness, courage, hospitality, humility, compassion and a commitment to justice. I had sort of expected these qualities.

"A true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor."

The recent court ruling against the Little Sisters of the Poor, a congregation of Roman Catholic women religious, marked the latest, but likely not the last, dustup in the debate over the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) contraception mandate.