ESPN: Sister Jean and Loyola won your heart, have returned for your soul

CHICAGO -- Half an hour before tipoff on a Wednesday, Loyola-Chicago players gather outside their locker room at Gentile Arena. They form a circle around a tiny woman in a black wheelchair and join hands.

It's a pregame scene that has been repeated for decades around here. Last March, it became internationally famous, mainly because of the "international celebrity" leading the ritual.

This night, the topic of Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt's prayer is overcoming adversity, appropriate for the 2019-20 Ramblers. She talks about Loyola's 1962-63 team, which featured four black starters and withstood racism on its way to the school's only national championship. When finished, Sister Jean takes each player's hands and does a quick blessing.

continue at ESPN

At 98 years old, Sr. Jean Dolores-Schmidt is Loyola-Chicago's biggest fan

At 98 years old, Sr. Jean Dolores-Schmidt is Loyola-Chicago's biggest fan.
She couldn't be happier after @RamblersMBB's win. pic.twitter.com/CKdz3T4MLj

— March Madness TV (@MarchMadnessTV) March 15, 2018

Anne at Loyola Art Museum

We ran out of time at our last Chicago trip and didn't make it.  Glad to see Anne grabbed some pictures.

continue at Imprisoned in my Bones

Chicago's Loyola University Speaker Who “Thanked God and Country for Abortion”

Loyola University in Chicago has invited a pro-abortion rights speaker to be the keynote speaker at its January 21 celebration of the life of Martin Luther King Jr. The event is sponsored by Loyola’s Department of Student Diversity and Multicultural Affairs.

The journalist Touré, who goes by his first name alone, is co-host of The Cycle on MSNBC. He has been invited by the Jesuit institution to deliver a speech entitled “How Racism Functions Today.”

SUPPORT FOR ABORTION AT A CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY?

Loyola University administrators are now facing criticism from pro-life Catholics including Kimberly Scharfenberger. Writing for the Cardinal Newman Society, Scharfenberger reports that on the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, Touré spoke publicly about his girlfriend’s abortion and how it had “saved his life.” According to Scharfenberger, Touré touted the importance of abortion rights on MSNBC’s The Cycle:

“I knew that pregnant woman and I were not going to be able to form a lasting family,” Touré reportedly remarked. “She decided it was best to have an abortion and days later she did, we did, and in some ways that choice saved my life.”

“I cannot imagine arguing against a woman’s right to control her body,” Touré continued. He even went on to “thank God and country” for abortion, which he claimed “was there to save [him] and keep [him] on a path toward building a strong family…”

Read more: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/kathyschiffer/2015/01/catholic-identity-abandoned-loyola-university-speaker-who-thanked-god-and-country-for-abortion/#ixzz3Op4Z2TQ7

Chicago's Loyoloa University changes guidelines for wedding ceremonies on campus

via Good Jesuit Bad Jesuit

Loyola University Chicago changed its guidelines for wedding ceremonies on campus, adopting an official policy ahead of Illinois' equal-marriage law on June 1. The new policy, enacted last December, only allows Catholic weddings in the university's Madonna della Strada Chapel. All other civil or religious weddings, including same-sex unions, are banned from campus facilities.

The decision also comes after a Loyola student launched a Change.org petition last September, urging university administrators to allow same-sex ceremonies on campus. Christine Irvine, a Loyola junior studying visual communication, started the petition after officials denied her request to use university facilities for her upcoming wedding.

Irvine said there were no problems until officials learned she would marry a woman. To date, the petition has more than 2,900 signatures. In her first interview about Loyola's new policy, Irvine told Windy City Times that the decision doesn't seem bad to anyone who may not know how it came about. She believes the university made the decision to specifically forbid same-sex ceremonies on campus. "It's really disheartening," Irvine said. "It's a sign of the non-acceptance and non-tolerance of the LGBT students on campus ... a sign of disrespect of our love compared to our peers." Before Loyola enacted its official policy last December, the university's standard practice welcomed ceremonies "legally recognized" in Illinois. But despite legal recognition of same-sex civil unions in Illinois, those ceremonies were still forbidden at Loyola venues.

It is unclear why civil marriage ceremonies were ever allowed in the chapel in the first place.