Published by America: The Jesuit Review, January 16, 2018
Having spent two years as a volunteer in Amate House, a Chicago-based Catholic volunteer program, Leslie Carranza is committed to the values of service, faith, social justice and community. She now brings what she learned about Catholic social teaching into the voting booth with her. But the church’s influence on her choices is, as with many Catholic voters, complex.
Photo story published in U.S. Catholic, December 2010
Along with Karl W. Hoffmann’s photographs, an introduction and captions describe the many sides of border life—migrants’ hope, activists’ care, and residents’ concerns.
At the Kino Border Initiative on the Mexican side of the border in Nogales, Jesuit Father Peter Neeley prays with migrants deported from the United States. On Sundays he frequently presides at Mass on the U.S. side of the border, where many of the parishioners work for homeland security. “Most of them say that’s what you should do,” he says. “ ‘You’re doing what you’re supposed to do; we’re doing what we’re supposed to do.’ They don’t see a contradiction there.”
Fear, hope, tension, and solidarity all coexist in the midst of ordinary life at the border. …
Megan Sweas 
Catholics United? Take a Closer Look
Media critique for TRANS/MISSIONS, the site for the Knight Center for Media and Religion, February 13, 2012
Since President Barack Obama announced his contraception compromise on Friday, the coalition of religious conservatives that had united against the Health and Human Services mandate to cover contraception has begun to fall apart. Obama said that insurance companies rather than religiously affiliated institutions would be required to cover “objectional services.” Roman Catholic bishops in the U.S. question whether this would actually work, but in rejecting the compromise Friday night, they also called “for the rescission of the mandate altogether.” (Rocco Palmo has a “bulked up” explanation of the bishops’ position.) Continue reading “Catholics United? Take a Closer Look” →