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The Deacon's Bench

That’s the charge some teachers are leveling in New York. Details: State testmakers played favorites when quizzing high-schoolers on world religions — giving Islam and Buddhism the kid-gloves treatment while socking it to Christianity, critics say. Teachers complain that the reading selections from the Regents exam in global history and geography given last week featured…

“Have upon your study table, always accessible, a good-sized substantially bound blank book. Whenever a germinant thought comes seize your pen and write it down. Such thoughts will come out of your special course of literary reading, out of your cursory scanning of current fiction, even out of the five-minute glance given to the morning…

A British observer has some sharp words about EMHCs at Catholic liturgies: What’s the point of all these assistants? The Catholic Church does allow for what it calls an extraordinary minister of Holy Communion, in cases when the priest is not available. But there is absolutely no need to have five extra ministers, giving Holy…

An encouraging piece of pro-life news late Monday: A federal district judge on Monday blocked President Obama’s 2009 executive order that expanded embryonic stem cell research, saying it violated a ban on federal money being used to destroy embryos. The ruling came as a shock to scientists at the National Institutes of Health and at…

A curious bit of news out of Beantown: The Archdiocese of Boston, under attack by anonymous conservative Catholic bloggers, has blocked access to one of the websites from computers within the church’s Braintree headquarters. The Boston Catholic Insider, the most lively of several blogs that have targeted the archdiocese, portrays Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley as a…

It’s rare to find the secular media taking on a topic like this: a columnist in a Connecticut paper is wondering why the suspended deacon program in his diocese (Norwich) remains on hold: Back at the start of 2009, Michael Strammiello, director of communications for the diocese and the spokesman for Bishop Michael Cote, said the bishop…

A blogger at the Washington Post has unearthed an interesting disparity in those poll figures showing a significant number of Americans think President Obama is a Muslim.  And what he’s uncovered is intriguing: A widely reported poll from the Pew Research Center pegs the number of Americans who believe President Obama is a Muslim at…

Much attention has been given to the new translation of the Roman Missal. What many have not noted, however, is the new dismissal options for the deacon (or, if he’s absent, the priest): Go forth, the Mass is ended. Or: Go and announce the Gospel of the Lord. Or: Go in peace, glorifying the Lord…

“Would it be an inviolate ignominy if my consubstantial oblation were suffused?” — Fr. Scott Hurd, on his Facebook page. Priceless. If you don’t get it, you will.  Eventually.  

The gentleman pictured above is — drumroll please — a Lutheran minister. And he’s part of a thriving ministry to Hispanics, many of whom are formerly Catholic. Details, from The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: The Rev. Jhon Freddy Correa pours blessed water over the heads of a squalling toddler and an angelic little girl, gathered with their…
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