On March 30, 2023, the Vatican repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery, a set of legal principles that validated European Christian settlers’ sovereignty over the Americas. In this piece from our archive, New York-based writer and therapist Tess Thompson reflects on spending Lent 2022 reading Sarah Augustine’s book The Land is Not Empty, which unpacks the Doctrine of Discovery and its impact on Indigenous cultures.

For the First Sunday of Advent, 2022, Interim Executive Director Lauren Barbato reflects on what it means to “stay awake” as North American Catholics grappling with our ugly personal and collective pasts.

Indigenous peoples will get their land back and the Doctrine of Discovery will die, and not through our leadership but with our solidarity.

We sit with tears in our eyes and become filled with anger and disbelief that these horrors continue to afflict our Ukrainian neighbors.

Moses’s encounter with God and King’s testimony are not about the future but about living into justice and taking action now.

In being willing to face the truth, we need to recognize that the dominant Christianity of our society has been and still is an “enemy to the cross of Christ.”

O, Holy One, remind us always that we were once strangers in a strange land, dependent on the kindness and generosity of others. Protect all those who are forced to leave the land of their birth, or are forcibly removed from it by those who would take it from them.

We are amidst the “Dustbowlification” of Colorado and the west from continuing to use fossil fuels.

Spurred on by the example of my Re/Generation Cohorts, I am more prepared to become “the voice crying out in the wilderness.” I am more ready to light the candles of expectation and joy, and these light a path for justice and hope for all who have been hurt or marginalized.