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The Deacon's Bench

As a Maryland boy, now living in New York, I found special significance in this news: This morning, Pope Benedict accepted the age-induced resignation of Cardinal William Keeler as archbishop of Baltimore, naming Archbishop Edwin O’Brien of the Military Services USA as the fourteenth successor to John Carroll, the nation’s founding bishop. The first New…

Cardinal Walter Kasper is already out in the fields, with a hammer and nails, mending some fences. He’s trying to patch things up with our Protestant neighbors: “What unites us is bigger than what divides us,” said Cardinal Walter Kasper, who is responsible for the church’s relations with other denominations. The Vatican’s doctrinal watchdog yesterday…

Well, some Protestants are not taking the document on Catholic primacy very well. Consider this snippet: The Rev. Setri Nyomi, general secretary of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, published an open letter July 10 addressed to Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. “An exclusivist claim that identifies the…

It’s not often that a baseball star opens up and talks candidly, even movingly, about his Catholic faith. But that’s what Oakland A’s star Mike Piazza has done with this interview at Beliefnet. The All Star says, among other things: My personal opinion is to keep (prayer)broader, to get up in the morning and pray…

Some things are just too good not to share. Like this clip from the vault of the Colbert Report, posted over at The Word: Catholic Colbert. A big tip of the zuchetto to Diane, who keeps the plates spinning at The Word (as well as over at Bringing Home The Word) for alerting me to…

With that one simple word, St. Benedict began his famous Rule, and what followed transformed Western monasticism and, in fact, the Western world. It’s no secret that monks the faith alive during some of the darkest times in history. But the values and ideas in the Rule of St. Benedict seeped into the rest of…

It was only a matter of time until something like this came along: a grassroots Catholic movement against Rudy Giuliani. The place is still under construction — if you visit, wear your hard hat and watch your step — but it’s already got a lengthy blog roll and a few links. You’ll also notice a…

Here’s something to make Pope Benedict lose sleep at night: a new survey that reports that American Catholics are fitting into the mainstream more, but practicing their faith less: According to the survey released Monday, 68 percent of Catholics said their religious faith is very important in their life, which was also true among non-Catholic…

Over at Open Book, Amy has a quick post on visiting the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, Georgia, just outside Atlanta. (Or, as they like to say this time of year, “Hot-lanta.”) I love that monastery, and the Trappists who live and pray there, and the glorious chants. I love the peace of…

You stumble across a story like this one, announcing that scientists have discovered “the most distant galaxies ever,” and you can’t help but think of David, who put pen to paper and wrote: When I see your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and stars that you set in place– What is man…
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