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The Deacon's Bench

Julie at Happy Catholic has posted the long-awaited movie trailer for the even longer-awaited movie version of Sondheim’s Grand Guignol masterpiece, Sweeney Todd. (There is a tiny Catholic connection, since this near-opera contains the giddy and macabre Act I finale “A Little Priest,” which sets the idea of murder and cannibalism to a merry waltz.)…

Are we losing a generation of Christians? That may be one conclusion you can draw from this troubling survey from the Barna Group. It indicates that a surprising number of young people do not have a favorable view of Christianity: As the nation’s culture changes in diverse ways, one of the most significant shifts is…

I noticed a new website on my sitemeter, checked it out and, lo and behold, it seems to be all about one man’s journey toward ordination as a Catholic deacon. There’s a lot of interesting material here about the author’s particular program — though I don’t think he says where he is, and he goes…

A Florida seminary is reeling from a lot of bad buzz over ads in its quarterly magazine — and now, it seems, it was all a terrible mixup: Whether it was a ghastly prank or a nightmarish mistake is not clear, but somehow eight pages of a Catholic seminary magazine were replaced by ads meant…

Blessing the animals for the feast of St. Francis of Assisi is a nice tradition. But a Dutch priest is taking things to extremes: A canary, a goldfish, a guinea pig, a handful of cats and more than two dozen dogs received blessings from a Catholic priest in church Thursday to mark World Animal Day.…

A potent new ad: Visit this link for more. Hat tip to J-Walking’s David Kuo at Beliefnet.

Here’s a trend I hadn’t heard about before: altar servers who are long past the age of puberty. By decades, in fact. They look nothing like the picture on the left. This, from a paper in New Jersey: As a young girl, Ginny Topolski looked on from the pews of the Church of the Most…

Coverage of the installation of the new bishop of Birmingham has been mysteriously scarce — in the general media and in the blogosphere (as one of my readers noted). But Whispers in the Loggia has corrected that injustice with a lengthy report that includes one or two eyebrow-raisers, along with Robert Baker’s homily. Take it…

To appreciate one of the most beloved of Catholic saints, it helps to look at his robe. In the basement of a basilica in the Italian village of Assisi, you will find it: a patchwork of brown cloth and thread, stretched on a board, preserved under glass. It is startling to see. This is the…

As a kind of publicity stunt, the promoters of a new movie on the 10 Commandments hired a company to conduct a poll — and the results could give you gas: Quick. Name each of the Ten Commandments. OK. Now name the ingredients in a Big Mac hamburger sold at McDonald’s. According to a new…
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