Copy Desk Daily, May 12, 2020

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.

"Laudato Si', on Care for Our Common Home," Pope Francis' encyclical on the environment, approaches its fifth anniversary. Join EarthBeat on an exploration of Laudato Si' with the new series Digging Into Laudato Si'. If you are interested, you can sign up for emails here.

Also on EarthBeat, Charles Camosy writes about nonhuman animals and the COVID-19 pandemic: "Unless human beings get into our proper relationship with animals, similar pandemics are almost surely guaranteed to be a constant in our future."

Theologians concerned over bishops' plans for 10-person pandemic Masses: Joshua J. McElwee reports that the main worries include "how a plan for Masses with fewer than 10 people might unfairly segregate peoples' access to the sacraments, whether such celebrations would downplay the liturgical role of the participating assembly, and if priests might burn themselves out in seeking to lead as many of the small celebrations as possible."

Are 'Weird Christians' really 'punk,' or just elitist?: Jamie Manson shares her reaction to a Times opinion piece on "Weird Christians," a small Twitter group that seeks "a decidedly anti-modern vision of faith" to escape "the crisis of modernity." Manson asks, "What precisely is this menacing modernism that makes young people want to flee to their nearest Gothic cathedral?" It's here, Manson writes, that the Times essay turns problematic.

In midst of pandemic, chaplain lends listening ear to the caregivers: Carol Raymond, 78, serves as a part-time chaplain for patients and staff at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital. When her family pushes her to quit, concerned that she could catch the novel coronavirus, she tells them she can't. "I feel like this is what God wants me to do. That I'm doing what God has called me to do," she tells NCR. "And it isn't just in the easy times, it's going to be in the difficult times like right now." 

Coronavirus: When a metaphor is more than a metaphor: When Michael Leach looks a image of the coronavirus straight on, do you know what he sees? Pizza being pulled apart. A sea mine ready to burst. The coronavirus "represents what we have become."