Doris Gottemoeller, RSM, PhD, served as the first president of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas. Other ministry experiences included service on numerous health care, higher education, seminary, retreat center and social service boards. She was the president of the LCWR, a delegate to the International Union of Superiors General, and an auditor at the Synod on Consecrated Life. She has lectured throughout the United States and abroad on topics of ministry, ecclesiology, and religious life. She holds an MS in chemistry from the University of Notre Dame and an MA and PhD in theology from Fordham University.
The Sisters of Mercy have responded to God’s calling in many ways throughout history. More recently, we have seen a change in the ministerial efforts of Sisters of Mercy.
Sisters of Mercy and their colleagues and friends around the world owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Sister Mary C. Sullivan, RSM. Our gratitude depends on much more than her commitment to scholarship and to theological inquiry. Most of all, we appreciate her dedication to life as a Sister of Mercy.
Gathering for communal prayer, especially morning and evening, in the spirit of the prayer of the church, assists us to grow in responsiveness to the conflicts and sufferings of the world. (Mercy Constitutions §17) The conflicts and sufferings of our world today call us to communal prayer more than ever. For almost thirty years the anchor of our communal prayer has been The Morning and
They were all gathered in one place together: Salvadorans, Guatemalans, Burundis, Kenyans, Sudanese, Americans, Vietnamese, Syrians and Samoans. Suddenly, there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire space in which they were. Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them. And they were all
The current Synod on Synodality is providing us with an unprecedented example of the sensus fidelium, i.e., the Spirit-guided intuition of the faithful. As we have been taught, Church teaching develops in response to the promptings of the Spirit in the hearts and minds of the faithful.