Copy Desk Daily, Aug. 3, 2020

by Teresa Malcolm

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Our team of copy editors reads and posts most of what you see on the websites for National Catholic Reporter, Global Sisters Report and EarthBeat. The Copy Desk Daily highlights recommended news and opinion articles that have crossed our desks on their way to you.

Sr. Patricia Chappell has long been a leader. Now she's being honored for it with the 2020 Outstanding Leadership Award from the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. The award ceremony is being postponed because the annual LCWR gathering is virtual this year, but GSR's Soli Salgado brings you an in-depth profile of this Notre Dame de Namur sister who formerly led Pax Christi USA and the National Black Sisters' Conference. She's now co-coordinator of her community's anti-racism team. In the words of one admirer: "She's unafraid to pursue what she feels is justice and being willing to take that risk to express an authentic voice on what she believes."

Matt Tedeschi writes that Catholic school employees have a choice to make, now that their protection is in peril, after the Supreme Court expanded the "ministerial exception" from employment laws. Tedeschi's commentary comes from a place of personal experience: He lost his job teaching religious studies in a Catholic high school after he was outed as gay.

As she sees some members of the Catholic hierarchy support the president, Dominican Sr. Ceil Lavan tussles with Catholic cognitive dissonance in the age of Trump.

Socially distanced fun for a good cause: Adapted for COVID times, sisters' beer garden fundraiser breaks record. The School Sisters of St. Francis in Milwaukee started the beer gardens last summer to raise money for their clean water projects around the world. This summer, they got creative with a beer garden in a box, distributed by drive-thru. "A beer garden is probably the most Milwaukee thing ever," says Sr. Kathy Chuston.

ICYMI: This weekend's NCR featured tributes to a longtime contributor who died in July. The late Jesuit Fr. Ray Schroth saw journalism as a noble calling, according to former NCR editor Tom Fox. And from a collection of voices — 'You were taken seriously': Former students remember Fr. Ray Schroth.

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