Inspiration Faith & Prayer Health & Wellness Entertainment Love & Family
Newsletters Special Offers

The Deacon's Bench

It’s not everyday that you read about a new monastery being built, from scratch, in the United States. But that’s exactly what’s happening with a hardy and devout group of Benedictines in Oklahoma: Benedictine monks will transform 75 large oak trees felled on the property of their monastery near Hulbert into large beams for their…

Pittsburgh’s new bishop-designate is getting to know his priests — and they are all aware that, like so many dioceses around the country, they have a lot of challenges ahead of them. Most urgently, the shortage of priests. The local paper takes note: When Bishop-designate David Zubik walked into a room filled with 240 Catholic…

How should the Catholic Church deal with couples who are living together and want to get married in the Church? Tough question. As recently as a generation ago, those cases were the exception. Now, they’re the rule. And a conference next month will seek to address that question: The increasing acceptance and practice of cohabitation…

I can’t believe it took an academic study to figure it out, but here it is: eating together as a family makes for healthier, happier kids. Read on: Social scientists at New York’s Columbia University have discovered certain phrases that help make it less likely that teenagers will smoke, drink, or use drugs. “Pass the…

With all the attention that the Church focuses on abortion and its aftermath, here is one group often overlooked: the fathers. A California conference later this fall will seek to change that, according to this item from the Catholic News Service: It took a long time for attorney Chris Aubert to miss his children —…

The Cardinal Archbishop of New York was not in a mood to banter with reporters yesterday morning: Edward Cardinal Egan bypassed protesters yesterday and curtly dismissed questions about a shuttered East Harlem church – telling reporters to “grow up.” “You just have to ignore all this and grow up,” Egan said when asked about the…

A friend just e-mailed me a short note about autumn, and I realized that yesterday, the 23rd, was the first day of fall. A little Emily Dickinson seems in order: The morns are meeker than they were,The nuts are getting brown;The berry’s cheek is plumper,The rose is out of town. The maple wears a gayer…

A woman who says she’s been having visions of the Blessed Mother has been told, in effect, “Uh, no, you’re not”: The Vatican has dismissed the claims of a woman in England who says Mary has visited her outside her home for more than 20 years. Ruling that her claims are “highly questionable,” the Vatican…

This story has been floating around for a bit — the National Catholic Register published it back in July — but it’s getting a second life in the blogosphere, earning a mention here and here. It’s truly astounding: Occasionally, one hears of a parish that has a man in seminary — but 15 from one…

A hat tip to Rod Dreher at Beliefnet for bringing the picture below to my attention: The shot comes from this flickr album, belonging to cjdavis, whoever that may be. It was taken at the Detroit airport four days ago.
archives most recent
search this blog
More from Beliefnet and our partners