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Catholic pilgrimage industry faces rescheduled trips and refund requests: Sophie Vodvarka writes about how the organization Dynamic Catholic sold Corky Thompson and her sister a pilgrimage to Lourdes and Fatima. Dynamic Catholic later rescheduled the trip until 2021 due to the pandemic. But because of her and her sister's respective ages, Thompson didn't wish to rebook a tour over a year out. Dynamic Catholic offered three options: sign up for the rescheduled 2021 tour with full credit; transfer the credit to another 2021 pilgrimage; or forefeit their respective $780 in nonrefundable deposits and travel insurance. The situation reflects the debate within the upended Catholic pilgrimage industry over "how Catholic values should inform tour companies' response to canceled pilgrimages."
Sisters remain involved in drug harm-reduction efforts, despite moral concerns: To help stop overdoses in the late '90s, Sisters of Charity planned a medically supervised injecting site for intravenous drug users. However, the Vatican ruled that the sisters' planned center was an "extremely proximate" material cooperation in evil. Though the sisters withdrew their plan, others used the sisters' research to implement the site. Today, as Georgia Perry reports, "since the pioneering efforts of the Sisters of Charity in Sydney, an estimated 100 safe injecting sites have opened in multiple cities worldwide."
The ties that bind: How the Catholic Church can respond to the cult of personality: "While married priests and women deacons might address the twin problems of language and culture just about anywhere in the world," Phyllis Zagano writes, "the church needs something else."
For Catholics, wearing a mask is an expression of true freedom: Mike Jordan Laskey offers "three points rooted in Catholic thought about what true freedom entails."
"Pray on Troost found us lined up, masked and maintaining a social distance, with instructions on how to pray for an hour's vigil. I had envisioned us standing with hands outspread and eyes closed, meditating and praying for peace and unity. But our prayer took a different form: the color of rejoicing": From Ursuline Sr. Michele Morek, GSR's liaison to sisters in North America: From Troost to trust on Juneteenth.
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