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The Deacon's Bench

The always-interesting blogger/priest (or priest/blogger?) from Washington, Msgr. Charles Pope, sums it up very succinctly. Read it and see if you don’t agree. Then share it with someone you love — or, maybe, someone who is planning to make that trip down the aisle.

His interview with a deacon sent out shockwaves a few weeks back, when it went viral and popped up on YouTube. Now, the priest has apologized — and saved his job: The Rev. Joseph Breen had a choice. Retract and apologize for his statements criticizing Roman Catholic teaching on birth control and married priests and…

Mark your calendars: that’s the date the new translation of the Roman Missal will debut in a parish near you. Details, from CNS: The missal, announced by Pope John Paul II in 2000 and first published in Latin in 2002, has undergone a lengthy and rigorous translation process through the International Commission on English in…

And it seems to be causing much less of a stir than what happened last year at Notre Dame: The archbishop of New Orleans has responded to the decision of Xavier University, a Catholic institution in his diocese, to host President Obama for a speech commemorating the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina on August 29.…

This is a new one to me, so I thought I’d toss it out there and see if anyone has an answer. A deacon reader writes: Can you find out for me, the validity of a mass intention in the absence of a priest by a deacon doing a communion service? I gather, from the…

Strange but true. Details: Three years ago, just before Easter, then-Archbishop Raymond Burke attended a Passover seder with about 25 people to commemorate God’s liberation of the Hebrew slaves from Egypt. Guests wore yarmulkes–Burke brought his own fuchsia zucchetto worn by bishops–as a symbol of God’s presence, and enjoyed traditional seder fare: matzo, horseradish, apples…

Local press reports sure make it sound that way: Church officials are hoping an increase in the number of priests graduating from the Milwaukee Archdiocese’s St. Francis de Sales Seminary will help slow Milwaukee’s growing priest shortage. But it might not be enough as priests ordained during the 1960s and 1970s, when the church experienced…

“Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote: ‘We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.’ There is a spirit arising from Ground Zero; it is an untethered ghost of American certainties and illusions and it seeks grounding in a solid but safe human understanding, touched with just a…

And now, for something completely different: a priest who puts a new spin on the gospels. Take a look: “Jesus Is Number One!” shouts deejay priest Don Roberto Fiscer as he lines up the latest number by Lady Gaga for parishioners gathered at a beach resort in northwestern Italy. In Fiscer’s unique way of spreading…

Morning Prayer. Mass. Krispy Kreme donuts. Thrasher’s French Fries. Phillip’s crab cakes. The Tilt-A-Whirl. Ron Hansen’s “Mariette in Ecstasy.” Evening Prayer. And, in between, the view below, interrupted periodically by ducks. 
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