Welcome to Thursday. Olga Segura, NCR opinion editor, says our church needs to be a part of the recent public reckoning with race in the aftermath of the election. Priests gather on Zoom for sessions on how to better serve transgender people. NCR says goodbye to longtime editor and publisher Tom Fox.

Our church — and our country — needs a reckoning on race

This week, in the midst of a contentious election and a divided country, NCR is attempting to answer the question: "Where do we — as a country and a church — go from here?"

NCR opinion editor Olga Segura has been struggling to answer this question. She remembers being sad and confused in 2016 after the election, but regardless who wins the 2020 election, she wanted to be hopeful.

"No matter the outcome of the election, 2020 has demonstrated the myriad ways American capitalism exploits marginalized communities, including depriving vulnerable populations of housing and adequate health care amid a global pandemic," she writes. "As countless Americans have lost their loved ones, U.S. billionaires continue to make billions."

But we can't move forward, she says, until we mourn all of the lives that we have lost and grapple with the ways that capitalism has contributed to the crises we are seeing.

"The Catholic Church, as many BIPOC have written this year, must be a part of this public reckoning," Segura continues. "This begins with the all-male, almost all-white body of Catholic leaders, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops."

You can read the rest of Segura's commentary here.

More background:

• Read previous commentary from Bishop John Stowe, Benedictine Sr. Joan Chittister and Franciscan Fr. Dan Horan.


• Follow all of NCR's Election 2020 coverage here.

Zoom series trains priests to minister to transgender people

James Scott P. Pignatella has known he was a man since he was 3 years old. Getting other Catholics to recognize him as such has been a struggle, he said.

Because he is transgender, Pignatella said he's also had to deal with decades of painful statements from clergy and laypeople that he believes stem from many Catholics' lack of knowledge about trans people and their lives.

Pignatella is one of the speakers in a three-part series of Zoom sessions — which began Oct. 27 and will also be held Nov. 18 and Dec. 15 — to educate Catholic priests on how to better serve their trans parishioners. The sessions are hosted by Stan "JR" Zerkowski, director of LGBT ministry for the Diocese of Lexington, Kentucky, and executive director of Fortunate Families.

More than 30 priests are expected to attend, Zerkowski said in an email.

You can read the rest of the story here.

More headlines

• Throughout his career, Tom Fox has never been afraid to write, publish or defend the tough story. We at NCR aspire to live up to his lifelong example as he retires — for the third time, writes NCR executive editor Heidi Schlumpf.
   
• A couple weeks ago, we learned that Pope Francis supports same-sex civil unions. But when we only talk about the pope, we forget about the struggles that grassroots LGBTQ Catholics face showing up to Mass every Sunday, writes Jason Steidl.
   
• At Global Sisters Report, sisters serve the educational needs of children with disabilities at St. Vincent's Centre for Inclusive Education in Nigeria, combining pupils with and without disabilities in classrooms with two teachers per class.


• A lack of oversight and control over the Vatican Secretariat of State's investment activities may have facilitated some bad property deals, said the president of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See.

Final thoughts

If you missed the post-election analysis with NCR political columnist Michael Sean Winters and Kansas City Star columnist Melinda Henneberger, you can check it out here. The conversation was moderated by NCR opinion editor Olga Segura. Also check out reporting from NCR as we tracked developments at the intersection of faith and politics throughout Election Day and beyond.

Until Friday,

Stephanie Yeagle
NCR Production/Online Editor
[email protected]
Twitter: @ncrSLY

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