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The Deacon's Bench

Generations after the Holocaust left its mark on the world, there are still new chapters being written about that dark moment in history. The Chicago Tribune today has news of a French priest helping to tell the story: At first glance, Rev. Patrick Desbois seems an unlikely Holocaust investigator. Yet this modest Roman Catholic priest…

The Archdiocese of Atlanta welcomed a new batch of deacons a couple weeks back — and the Georgia Bulletin was there. The remarks by Archbishop Gregory struck me as especially vital, and necessary: Twenty robes and neatly folded stoles rested on the marble communion rail. The buzz of chatter and laughter signaled a growing crowd…

There’s been a lot of hand-wringing and teeth-gnashing, on all sides, over the Pope’s revision of a prayer in the Tridentine Rite which mentions the Jews. Now, a leading rabbi has offered his thoughts in the Jewish Daily Forward: In this day and age, Jews should not be overreacting to Pope Benedict XVI’s revision of…

Can a Catholic support Barack Obama for president? Recently, the conservative Catholic law professor Douglas A. Kmiec raised that question online at Slate — and he caught considerable flack for it from, most notably, Deal Hudson. Kmiec decided to tackle the issue head-on, at Catholic Online. Here, he explains his misgivings about John McCain: Part…

A commentator over at Bloomberg is suggesting that the real problem facing the poor of the Philippines is that they’re having too many babies. And he blames the Church. So, of course, he has a latex solution: “The most unprepossessing candidate for the Holy Grail of prosperity is seven inches of latex: a condom,” Easterly,…

That would be the Chesapeake Bay, in my beautiful home state of Maryland. And that happens to be the name of a wonderful little blog by a Redemptorist by the name of Fr. Andy Costello. A reader — another Redemptorist — dropped me a line not long ago and suggested I check it out. I…

When John Paul made his first visit to these shores, in 1979, I was a “marshall” on the Washington mall — an usher, really, bused in with my parish — and vendors were selling tee shirts with that cute saying printed on the front. I imagine we’ll be seeing more like that when his successor…

As one of our correspondents at CBS likes to put it: “Everybody has a story.” And the story of this Protestant minister’s conversion to Catholicism, printed recently in the Catholic Explorer in Illinois, is well worth hearing: At the same time he was performing duties as a Protestant minister, John Johnson told the Catholic Explorer…

For as long as I can remember — and I’m sure, well before that — little girls were receiving their first communion in white dresses. I thought that was a fairly standard tradition, with a distinct connection to both the white baptismal garment and the white bridal gown. A beautiful symbol of innocence and purity.…

Here’s a surprising, and heartening, bit of journalism from, of all places, the Chicago Tribune, about a demographic shift in the diaconate: When Sergio Lopez’s wife was diagnosed with breast cancer and told she had only three months to live, he looked to the sky and asked God to allow her to see their young…
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