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The Deacon's Bench

Another week, another flood of articles about Tony Blair’s supposedly imminent conversion. This one, from the Irish Independent, offers some insight into the guiding force behind this tidal pull across the Tiber — Blair’s wife: Cherie, as is well known, grew up in a difficult family situation. Her father, the hell-raising actor Tony Booth (who…

What does it take to win the Catholic vote? According to the U.S. News & World Report, the Democrats are working on that question even as I type. A Roman Catholic nun who leads a social justice advocacy group called Network, Simone Campbell rarely got a phone call from Capitol Hill before the 2006 election.…

Since it’s the feast of the nativity of John the Baptist, some thoughts on baptism seem in order. I’ll be performing my first baptisms next Sunday. Here’s a draft of my homily. — “Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized in the Jordan by John.” Let me tell you about the Jordan River.…

Over at Open Book, Amy has posted an intriguing picture of Tony Blair and Pope Benedict, from their meeting today. The Prime Minister presented the pontiff with a series of pictures of…John Henry Newman. A curious choice, you say? The Catholic Encyclopedia describes Newman thus: Cardinal-Deacon of St. George in Velabro, divine, philosopher, man of…

From the land of Joseph Smith and Mitt Romney comes this nice piece on the diaconate: Amid all the distress among American Catholics over the shrinking number of priests, one bright fact stands out: Nowhere in the world have Catholic men heeded the call to a separate ordained ministry as in the United States. In…

The folks over at Salon have unearthed some interesting stuff about one of the people on Rudy Giuliani’s staff: a monsignor accused of child sex abuse: Giuliani employs his childhood friend Monsignor Alan Placa as a consultant at Giuliani Partners despite a 2003 Suffolk County, N.Y., grand jury report that accuses Placa of sexually abusing…

More word circulating today that the prime minister is about to take the plunge. According to informed sources, Mr Blair has been readied for this milestone in his spiritual life by a Royal Air Force chaplain, Father John Walsh, who for the past four years has been quietly slipping into Chequers, the prime minister’s country…

A few spoilsports are tsk-tsk-ing about President Bush’s recent gift to Pope Benedict: a walking stick engraved with the 10 Commandments. Some are taking issue with the fact that the version presented to the pontiff isn’t the Catholic version — and others are rolling their eyes because the President referred to His Holiness as simply…

Thanks to The Word, a.k.a Catholic Colbert, we have this priceless bit of whimsy from earlier in the week. Who better to bridge the gap between faith and science than Mr. Wizard…or Stephen Colbert?

And the ordination was so huge, it had to be held in a stadium: The ordination of 60 men to the Permanent Diaconate at Santa Barbara City College’s La Playa Stadium represented the largest single group of deacons ordained at one time in the history of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, and possibly in the…
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