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The Deacon's Bench

I’s impossible to know if The Man in White listens to the White Album, but someone at the Vatican clearly loves the Fab Four: The Vatican has finally made peace with the Beatles, saying their drug use, “dissolute” lives and even the claim that the band was bigger than Jesus are all in the past…

That idea may seem farfetched to some, especially now. But Ross Douthat argues that Benedict may be remembered by history for being a better pope than his celebrated predecessor: The last pope was a great man, but he was also a weak administrator, a poor delegator, and sometimes a dreadful judge of character. The church’s…

“The story of redemption began with a heroic ‘Yes’ by a young girl named Mary, when, in the spirit of humility and obedience, she said to the angel’s message announcing that she would be the mother of Jesus: ‘May it be done unto me according to your word.’ And then when the purpose of her…

The gospel today is about how challenging it can be to believe something you can’t see.  How difficult it can be to accept something simply on faith.  Well, this Easter season, nobody, I think, stands in contrast to that more than a young man named Jeremy Feldbusch. On April 3, 2003, Sergeant Jeremy Feldbusch was…

The shocking tragedy in Russia today includes the news that several prominent members of the clergy were among those killed: The Holy Father expressed his sorrow over the death of Polish President Lech Kaczynski and those accompanying him on a flight to Russia on Saturday morning. Pope Benedict remembered all of those who died and…

If the grim news has left you feeling feeling bludgeoned and bruised the last several days, the video below should lift your heart.   As described at First Things: Fans greeted each other on Easter at a Sunday evening soccer match at Moscow Lokomotiv stadium. At the beginning of the second half of the match thousands…

That’s how Elizabeth Scalia succinctly describes Newsweek’s latest screed about women and the church. Scalia notes: The fact is, for all of the talk about how oppressive the church has been for women, there has been no other institution in history which has given women such free reign to create, explore, discover, serve, manage, build,…

Buried inside his characteristically insightful piece about the man who will soon be leading Los Angeles, NCR’s John Allen offers this nugget: As things stand today, there are seven archdioceses in America where the archbishop is almost certain to become a cardinal: New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and now Houston. By this…

A woman I know is grieving the death of her beloved cat after a long and difficult illness. The cat was 17. The woman is deeply religious, and she arranged for her pet to be sent off with a prayer service and funeral.   Which brings me to a topic people love to debate.  At…

“From the beginning and throughout history, Peter has often been a wobbly rock, a source of scandal, corrupt, and yet this is the one – and his successors – whose task is to hold us together so that we may witness to Christ’s defeat on Easter Day of sin’s power to divide. And so the…
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