Copy Desk Daily, Aug. 25, 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.

We're huge Notre Dame football fans, but should they even be playing this fall? Mike Jordan Laskey's biggest sports obsession is University of Notre Dame football. His friend and former Notre Dame classmate Chris Wilson writes a newsletter and hosts a podcast about the Fighting Irish. In the latest installment of NCR column "The Gospel of Sports," the two try to process everything involved with a college football season that may not even happen this fall.

Catholic women still don't have suffrage in their church: From NCR columnist Jamie Manson: "As we celebrate the suffrage centennial, it's important for women, particularly Catholic women, to remember the arguments that anti-suffragists made in their opposition of a woman's right to vote. They sound eerily similar to the Catholic hierarchy's current arguments against women's decision-making power in the church and against women's ordination."

18 Things to know about Howey Ou, China's only teenage climate striker: Sally Ho of Green Queen introduces readers to Howey Ou, the 17-year-old girl who is the lone public teenage climate striker in China. Every week she publicly demands that the government act to lower emissions to stop a climate disaster. Ou's climate activism has left her barred from school and away from home. Regardless, she sees hope as she continues a path of nonviolent civil disobedience. 

Since the Amazon synod, what has happened to talk of synodality? "Lest we forget, the church is not a democracy. In a democracy, theoretically at least, everyone has a voice and a vote. But the church is controlled by less than 1% of its members. The church — at every level — is controlled by its clerics." Phyllis Zagano asks: How can the talk become the walk when it comes to women in the church?

Links for 8/25/20: Michael Sean Winters' roundup of political news and opinion includes this from The Washington Post, "a state-of-the-race report from Luzerne County, one of the pivot counties that voted for Obama twice and then delivered Trump a 19-point win. Turns out that Joe Biden is holding his own in this county, which is next door to the county where he was born. The president was in the area last Thursday hosting a rally. Election night, this will be one of the first bell weather counties to watch."