Novelist Ron Hansen was ordained a permanent deacon last month:

As a deacon, Hansen will work in campus ministry, mainly preaching and assisting with Masses and performing weddings in the Mission Church, said Jack Treacy, S.J., campus ministry director.

But while Hansen is now a clergyman in the Catholic Church, he doesn’t plan on proclaiming that in pages of his upcoming novels.

"My novels will not be written by ‘The Rev. Ronald Hansen,’ " he said. "Being a deacon shouldn’t have any effect on the readers if I do the fiction properly."

Rev. Tony Mancuso, director of formation for the Diocese of San Jose, said one of the most important roles of a deacon is to preach, and he expected Hansen would be more than up to the task.

"He certainly has all the words," Mancuso said of the writer.

My favorite Hansen books are Mariette in Ecstasy,

Atticus

and

there’s a lot of good stuff in A Stay Against Confusion: Essays on Faith and Fiction, as well.

Hansen also wrote the intro for the Loyola Classics edition of Edwin O’Connor’s The Edge of Sadness.

(Found at Kevin Jones’ blog)