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The Deacon's Bench

This is irresistible, courtesy Diane over at The Word: Catholic Colbert. It’s a little tidbit from a taping of The Colbert Report, from a blogger who was there and described this story that My Close Personal Friend Stephen Colbert told before the show. He was asked about his short-lived run for the White House and…

Five years after it began, the grim news continues: A prominent Jesuit priest accused of sexually victimizing teenage boys who were his valets as he traveled the world leading Roman Catholic spiritual retreats was taken into federal custody yesterday in Chicago. The priest, the Rev. Donald J. McGuire, was charged by the federal authorities with…

In 2004, a group of angry parishioners in Massachusetts began a sit-in at their parish to protest its closing. They’re still there. From The Boston Globe: It has been three years since the Archdiocese of Boston, as part of its controversial church closing plan, locked parishioners out of St. Frances X. Cabrini in Scituate. At…

We’re seeing it here in Brooklyn, and it’s happening everywhere: ethnic parishes, built by the blood, sweat and tears of Slavs, Italians, Poles and Germans, are rapidly disappearing. Immigrants are moving to the suburbs, and their children are scattering. Here’s a glimpse at what that means for the industrial area of Allentown, Pennsylvania: It’s Polish…

I’m back. Regular readers – and I know there are one or two out there – may have noticed my absence last week. Tuesday morning, I finished throwing a few things into my Travelpro and dragged it out to a cab and headed for LaGuardia and, ultimately, Conyers, Georgia. There, I spent four days at…

A resident, holding up a baby, struggles to cross a flooded street due to heavy rains caused by tropical storm Noel, in la Plaine, Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2007. Photo: from AP/Logan Abassi, MINUSTAH

In some places, it seems, the era of liturgical innovation is far from over. And one of those places is Holland. Sandro Magister from Rome has done a little digging into what is happening to Catholicism in the land of tulips and windmills: In restoring full citizenship to the ancient rite of the Mass, with…

Here’s a remarkable vocation story: a Franciscan who is also a musician — and who is about to enter a cloister in Italy. It comes from The Catholic Moment newspaper in Indiana: Music often tells a story, and a concert at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church let Father Maximilian Mary Dean, FI, share his…

John Kerry — remember him? — popped up the other day and spoke to a group of reporters about religion, faith, and some of the controversy over abortion that dogged him in the 2004 presidential campaign. This, from Catholic News Service: On the first day of November 2007, U.S. Sen. John Kerry finally gave a…

Lo and behold, I return from a four-day retreat with Trappist monks — four days spent blissfully chanting the psalms at four in the morning, conversing with geese, napping at mid-day, and devouring brandy-laced fudge at dinner — when what do I find in my e-mailbox but a cheerful note from my favorite blogger in…
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