Catherine's Cafe Vocation Blog

Some days ago, I completed and returned my absentee ballot because I won’t be at home on the day that my state holds its primary elections. Do you sometimes feel overwhelmed by the continuing barrage of campaign ads and the unending media coverage of primary elections and caucuses leading-up to the July political conventions? The many political action committees and individuals who use enormous wealth to influence campaigns and elections make me wonder whether our “government of the people, by the people, for the people” still exists. My tendency toward cynicism was brought-up short in recent conversations with the two Dominican Sisters from Vietnam with whom I live in community. Both Sisters are college students. One Sister has received course assignments related to our US political parties and current candidates. Discussing an assignment with her, I realized how difficult it must be to understand all this political activity when a person has spent a lifetime in a country that fo...

For I know the plans I have in mind for you; plans for your welfare and not for woe, so as to give you a future full of hope (Jeremiah 29:11) We are in the midst of our congregation’s 24 th General Chapter, my first.  As un-Dominican as this may seem, I find myself in a space where the events of the world, while so present to me and to all of us in both our conversation and our prayer, almost seem suspended. I am finding Chapter to be an immersion experience. While in session, General Chapter is our highest governing authority, making decisions affecting the entire congregation and electing the prioress and congregational council.   Its purpose is to protect the patrimony of the congregation, understood not as money, but as the intentions of our Founder - that which we most treasure.   I love that we are being asked to look to both our Dominican identity and our Sinsinawa Dominican identity to root us in the work we are being called to do. So far, I am f...