More on Emilie Lemmons

Here is a brief reflection that I wrote for Busted Halo on Emilie Lemmons, the young writer from the Catholic Spirit in Minneapolis.

Emilie Lemmons, a writer and mother of two (although as she would say “not necessarily in that order”), is someone few people outside of the Minneapolis/St. Paul area probably know. If you read her blog, Lemmondrops, however, you had a window into the daily struggle and heart-wrenching experience of a woman who shuddered at the possibility of dying too young from cancer with two young children in tow.

Before her diagnosis, Lemmons wrote for the Catholic-based paper The Catholic Spirit, of the Archdiocese of Minneapolis/St Paul. The Spirit, as it is known in Catholic media circles, is an exceptional Catholic newspaper that really values its journalistic integrity — it doesn’t just do fluff pieces on “nice Catholic stories.”

Lemmons was at the heart of that kind of truthfulness — bishops and church officials often questioned how she could ask such a tough question when she was supposed to be “on their side.”

Joe Towalski, her editor at the paper, remarked: “Emilie, of course, was on the church’s side. But she never felt she had to sacrifice good journalistic principles in telling the Good News, and she was a big reason The Catholic Spirit was named the top large-circulation diocesan newspaper in the country for its work in 2003, 2005 and 2006.”

May she Rest in Peace.