Lisa Kray

[Lisa Kray @lisakkray]

@agonzalezwest It makes me sad. Real progress isn't possible if we abandon truth and slip into culture war politics.

[Lisa Kray @lisakkray]

@AbdulElSayed You do not represent us. We reject your false pandering for power. Our party deserves a better candidate.

[Lisa Kray @lisakkray]

@johnamonaco Both could be true, couldn't they? Although, I feel like Church leadership is pretty heavy on the DEI so I'd be surprised by racism

[Lisa Kray @lisakkray]

@BarackObama The reality of it still makes me shake.

[Lisa Kray @lisakkray]

@BishopBarron The threat is still present. All of my fellow progressive catholics, who get the most outraged at selective silence, suddenly have nothing to say today. It is disheartening.

[Lisa Kray @lisakkray]

@z12z21 @KeenanPeachy People approach him with such a black and white mentality, and rarely praise the good he does. Name another bishop being courageous like this.

[Lisa Kray @lisakkray]

@vaticanaccess @WashArchdiocese I mean, I'm not gonna deny the racism, but there are also just far fewer Black Catholics than any other race.

[Lisa Kray @lisakkray]

@ChristopherHale What is your stance on abortion?

[Lisa Kray @lisakkray]

@Dishwater_Crane @NCRonline liberal catholics need a new voice where they can be represented in a way that's still committed to truth

[James Martin, SJ @JamesMartinSJ]

Let us now praise holy women.

Like millions of others, I found myself surprisingly sad over the death of Dolly Parton. Of course, like those same millions of people, I was a huge fan of this woman with an outsized musical talent. She was a regular voice on the radio from my earliest years; I vividly remember eating Wheaties as a 13-year-old on a school morning and hearing her plaintive cri de coeur, “Jolene,” on the pink Bakelite radio that sat on our kitchen counter.

Dolly was a fixture in pop culture through my teenage years with tuneful hits like “I Will Always Love You” and “Here You Come Again” in the 1970s. A few years later, “9 to 5" summed up a whole era of office work when I was working in an office myself.

Her voice spoke, or sang, for itself; but growing up, I was only dimly aware of her prodigious writing talent: she was the composer of 3,000 songs, many of them covered by other artists. And I always enjoyed her sunny disposition and, especially, her confidently pushing back against people who would reduce her to a cartoon.

But only later in life did I became aware of her tremendous charity and big heart: giving away thousands of books to children in need (and “babies”: I love the idea of giving a baby a book); offering countless acts of charity to residents in Sevier County, Tennessee, her hometown; quietly helping a struggling singer or artist or writer or anyone; and being an early supporter of the LGBTQ community, when that could prove deeply unpopular.

The universal mourning may come from that last quality, which you could call charity or compassion, but you could also call holiness. When you read even cursorily about her life, what becomes obvious is a Christian faith that led to a lifetime of kindness and charity, often behind the scenes. This helps to explain the great sadness that greeted her death.

And it reminded me of someone else.

Think of how often we read about Jesus in the Gospels being pursued by crowds. Early in the Gospel of Mark, we read that Jesus’s “fame” spread throughout Galilee, with crowds waiting at his door in Capernaum. It’s not just the healing that people wanted; it was the innate desire to be near holiness: to be near compassion, near acceptance, basically, near love. Holiness calls to us, because it’s a quality of the divine and is one way that God draws us closer.

We saw in Dolly Parton something more than talent, something more than wit and something more than even charity; we saw holiness. Thank you, Dolly, for teaching me about the Christian life. And may you rest in peace with the God you loved and served so well.

[Lisa Kray @lisakkray]

@JamesMartinSJ Reminds my of my grandparents! I miss brick homes

[Lisa Kray @lisakkray]

@ABC And people say the anti-vax movement isn't dangerous

[Lisa Kray @lisakkray]

@factpostnews This is the administrations response to forrest fires happening at a greater frequency than ever?

[Lisa Kray @lisakkray]

@ChristopherHale This sounds a lot like something Pope John Paul II would have said! Happy to see it.

[Lisa Kray @lisakkray]

@JamesMartinSJ @OutrchCatholic I think anyone would find it difficult to make a logical argument that they shouldn't

[CBS News @CBSNews]

The 65-year-old man who was flipped eight feet in the air by a bison this month at Yellowstone National Park shared his story from his hospital bed. Carl Isom-McDaniel broke his femur in four places, had surgery and is now recovering at a Montana hospital.

“They move faster than you could ever imagine,” Isom-McDaniel said.

[FactPost @factpostnews]

The following diseases have surged as RFK Jr and Trump have cut public health and pushed vaccine disinformation:

—Measles
—Flu
—Rotavirus
—Whooping cough
—Ebola
—Hantavirus
—Cyclosporiasis
—E. coli
—Campylobacteriosis
—Listeria
—Cryptosporidiosis
—Infant botulism

[Lisa Kray @lisakkray]

@BarackObama Makes me want to book a trip to chicago, Mr. President!!

[Lisa Kray @lisakkray]

@MarcoFoster_ I have no idea how people turn a blind eye to this!! But hunter comes across the same way. I feel like I can't trust anyone right now