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

The Deacon's Bench

Today’s scripture readings are about something we don’t hear mentioned very much. Humility. If you go to “Google” and type in the word “humility,” you’ll get about 8 million entries. But if you then go and type “fame,” you’ll get 83 million – 10 times the amount for humility. That about sums it up. Fame…

Increasingly, churches and universities are using 21st century technology to spread the first century gospel. The latest trend: online bible study. The Dallas Morning News reports: When Catherine Kuehler of Dallas moved to Australia this summer, she didn’t want to give up the Bible study class that the University of Dallas taught at her parish.…

Confession isn’t quite what it used to be. These days, it’s more apt to be known as “reconciliation,” and the long lines of penitents on a Saturday evening have dwindled to only the most devout (or, some priests will tell you, disturbed.) The Los Angeles Times takes a look at the power of the penitential…

Is the Holy Spirit up to something? Just days after I posted this little item on Fr. James Martin’s new book, “A Jesuit Off-Broadway,” comes word that a new theater company in St. Louis is planning to stage dramas about religion and spirituality: A new theater company is set to make its debut in St.…

A group of seminarians from a variety of faiths has banded together to try and buy a former Carmelite monastery in Chicago’s New Hyde Park section. If that’s not ambitious enough, their plans including using the building as an interfaith center. The Chicago Tribune has the scoop: For a dozen years, Roman Catholic friars prayed…

Some of us of a certain age know it as the “mass for shut-ins.” But tens of thousands see it pop up early Sunday morning on TV: a 30-minutes mass taped in a small studio that can give the viewer almost everything the regular mass offers — with the notable exception of communion. For the…

Shortly after I posted the news item about the priest pedophile Msgr. Othmar Schroeder, I wandered over to Rod Dreher’s blog and noticed he’d linked to the same story. But then, Rod added his own footnote, remembering a friend he called “John”: John was somewhere between 50 and 60 when I met him. It was…

The ongoing sex abuse scandals of the Church are even reaching beyond the grave. The New York Times reports the unusual story of a small town in Indiana coping with one beloved priest’s decidedly mixed legacy: Msgr. Othmar Schroeder was revered in this town of 12,000 for starting a parish and a school. The Knights…

Another new book to add to my sagging and overcrowded shelf: A City Upon A Hill: How Sermons Changed the Course of American History by Larry Witham. According to the description at Amazon.com: The Puritan founder John Winthrop preached about “a city upon a hill,” Abraham Lincoln’s two greatest speeches have been called “sermons on…

Almost every diocese is feeling the pinch from the priest shortage — but parts of Texas, with an enormous influx of Latino immigrants, may be feeling it more sharply. A local TV affiliate decided to take a look: An alarming shortage of Catholic priests in the Houston area is putting a strain on those already…
archives most recent
search this blog
More from Beliefnet and our partners