The Mother House grounds were transformed today August 13th into an outdoor concert venue to welcome women from Chez Doris, a charitable organization offering a daytime shelter 7 days a week for all women in difficulty. The sisters were happy to receive these guests, often on the peripheries of society. Some of Chez Doris’ clients who are now in temporary housing have been faithfully maintaining quarantine and social distancing and this morning’s concert provided them with a much needed respite from the isolation imposed by this situation. The personnel of Chez Doris and its volunteers arranged for the concert and expressed their gratitude to the sisters for opening their grounds for this special event.
6 August 2020
As a wide coalition of faith-based communities from around the world, we have committed to speaking with one voice that rejects the existential threat to humanity that nuclear weapons pose. We reaffirm that the presence of even one nuclear weapon violates the core principles of our different faith traditions and threatens the unimaginable destruction of everything we hold dear. Nuclear weapons are not only a future risk, their presence here and now undermines the ethical and moral foundations of the common good. We call for your commitment to a world that is more peaceful, safe, and just—a world only possible with the elimination of nuclear weapons.
Traveling south on Route 95 entering Providence, Rhode Island, for many years, there was graffiti written on the side of an overpass. In enormous letters it said, “It is a sin to build a nuclear weapon.” I was doubly intrigued by the facts that it was written there and that it stayed there for years. I eventually found the source of the quote. It was from a book on the Gospel and nonviolence by Fr. Richard McSorley, S.J. I wish the sentence was still there.