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The Deacon's Bench

The Vatican’s recent pronouncement about end-of-life issues has raised new questions, and posed new challenges, for a lot of Catholics. And Robert McClory has decided to take a hard look at them in the Chicago Tribune: For severely ill patients, particularly Catholic ones, the choice of hospital has suddenly become more complicated. Following a declaration…

How’s the priest shortage affecting the Deep South? A paper in Mississippi takes a look at one parish in one diocese, where lay ministers are taking charge and pointing to a new way of church management: Dressed in a knee-length black skirt and tweed blazer, Pam Minninger stood at the entrance of St. Joseph Catholic…

It’s not often that you stumble on a journalist of deep faith, writing about that faith honestly and forthrightly in the secular media. But this comes to us from Tracy Grant, the Weekend editor of the Washington Post — a heartfelt meditation on making a deal with God: I’ve started hanging out at the Cathedral…

Cash or charge? More and more parishes are doing this, and now there’s an item in a Palm Springs, California paper about it: giving parishioners the option of contributing via credit card: You swipe a credit card to buy furniture, clothes and even fast food. Now some local churchgoers can swipe for their offering, too.…

And you will be, after you see and hear this amazing rendition of “Ave Maria,” by Bobby Ferrin. Hat tip to New Advent for linking to it, and to Alive and Young for first posting it. It’s just wonderful. Enjoy.

Following up on my post the other day about Bobby Jindal, here’s the AP write-up on his election triumph: U.S. Rep. Bobby Jindal became the nation’s youngest governor and the first nonwhite to hold post in Louisiana since Reconstruction when he carried more than half the vote to defeat 11 opponents. Jindal, the Republican 36-year-old…

I love a good vocation story — especially when it involves a deacon. And this one, from California, is a real inspiration. Get a box of Kleenex and read on: Tom Ciccarelli’s path to becoming a deacon for the Catholic Diocese of Stockton is a tale of tragedy, romance and changed hearts, with a little…

That great Talmudic scholar, Woody Allen, once said that “90% of success is just showing up.” He probably didn’t realize it, but he could have been describing the message at the heart of this morning’s gospel. Because in the parable of the persistent widow, we are given a valuable lesson about what my grandmother might…

It’s hard not to like the story of this (as the New York Times puts it) “improbable” candidate for governor in Louisiana — a Catholic convert who could could give a completely new face to politics in the American south: An Oxford-educated son of immigrants from India is virtually certain to become the leading candidate…

Jacques Berlinerblau, from the Washington Post’s On Faith section, has been taking a hard look at the Giuliani candidacy this week — and draws interesting parallels and contrasts with another pro-choice Catholic who ran afoul of some bishops, John Kerry: In the winter of 2004 Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis had made it known…
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