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The Deacon's Bench

Sad news today that Dan Fogelberg has died of prostate cancer at 56. His song, “Same Old Lange Syne” for decades has been a perennial this time of year. But for me, his greatest legacy is “Longer,” which was the “first dance” song played at my wedding in 1986. Below, in tribute to him, I…

There are a lot of bishops floating around this country, and every now and then I stumble across one I haven’t heard of before: someone who is quietly but diligently tending his flock, in a far-flung corner that doesn’t get as much attention as, say, New York or Washington or Los Angeles. This bishop is…

We’re accustomed to seeing Nativity scenes in stables and caves; sometimes, the scenes even unfold under the open sky. But the one going up at the Vatican this week sounds altogether different — and very fitting, actually, coming from a pope named Joseph: Sheltered under a tree and concealed by burlap and scaffolding, the Nativity…

Back in the 1930s, one of the great producers in Hollywood was the legendary Samuel Goldwyn, of Metro Goldwyn Meyer, or MGM. He thought movies should be entertaining, not preachy or heavy-handed. He once said, “If you want to send a message, use Western Union.” I thought about him when I was looking over the…

A regular visitor to The Bench, Pete Bond, sent me this wonderful bit of news: Saturday, he and four other men will become the newest members of the diaconate family in California: As most of the faithful are aware, “Gaudete” means “joyous”…and so it is with great joy that the Diocese of San Bernardino announces…

Anyone curioius about what Catholics really think of the Church — and why so many of them aren’t there for Sunday mass — should check out the Rhode Island Catholic for an interesting piece on Catholics who are absent, but still “Catholic”: It is no secret that Mass attendance has fallen across the United States…

Is any candidate good enough? These days, maybe not. Peggy Noonan has some thoughts this morning on the impact that Christian conservatives have had on American politics: The Republican race looks–at the moment–to be determined primarily by one thing, the question of religious faith. In my lifetime faith has been a significant issue in presidential…

The Vatican has used yesterday’s feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe to issue some thoughts on what it means to be a Catholic communicator. As a Catholic, and a communicator, I found this pretty interesting: Like Our Lady of Guadalupe, Catholic communicators must share the message of the Gospel in a way that reflects the…

The other day, Rocco posted about St. Louis’s Fr. John Jay Hughes, whose homilies have become the stuff of legend. The good padre now has started posting them to a blog. One of my readers sifted through some of the homilies and came across this wonderful nugget: “The Lord came to me more recently, and…

Elsewhere, I’ve written about a particular FOB (friend of the blog), author and Jesuit celeb, James Martin. (He’s become quite the priest-about-town, even popping up on television to chat with MCPF Stephen Colbert. I expect to read about him in Liz Smith any day now.) Well, Jim has a new book out — “A Jesuit…
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