The Deacon's Bench
God bless Tom McDonald for digging up this wonderful picture, which came along at a moment I really needed it. After the last few days, it gives us all something we sorely need: Santa Pope! 🙂 Read more
God bless Tom McDonald for digging up this wonderful picture, which came along at a moment I really needed it. After the last few days, it gives us all something we sorely need: Santa Pope! 🙂 Read more
A beautiful testimony to the power of prayer, and the power of presence, from the National Catholic Register: Nothing seemed different about the well-traveled two-lane route leading into this Connecticut community on Saturday. Newtown looked for all purposes like the typical scenic, small New England town — the way it always did. The turn at the town’s landmark flagpole quickly conducted local traffic past St. Rose of Lima Church to Interstate 8 a couple hundred yards further on, then into the... Read more
The video, from CNS: Read more
At the beginning of Advent, I quoted the first line of that timeless chant in my homily, and after Mass a parishioner took me to task. “Deacon Greg,” she said, “you know you said something anti-Semitic in your homily?” I was taken aback. She explained, “That first line in ‘O Come, O Come, Emmanuel’? Where it says ‘And ransom captive Israel’? That’s calling for the conversion of the Jews. We don’t believe that anymore. And there are a lot of... Read more
Photo: Shannon Hicks/Newtown Bee This picture was one of the first images to circulate widely, just after the story broke, and it remains arguably the defining image of this tragedy. A writer with Poynter Institute, Julie Moos, explores how a small weekly paper is covering a story of global interest and national significance, and she has the story behind the photograph: Newtown Bee Associate Editor Shannon Hicks was at the newspaper’s offices about a mile and a quarter from Sandy... Read more
For those who missed it, here’s the lovely, unexpectedly moving cold open to “Saturday Night Live” last night. Access Hollywood noted: “Saturday Night Live” strayed from the comedic path for their cold open on this week’s show, opting instead for a somber performance of “Silent Night” by the New York City Children’s Chorus in light of Friday’s Newtown, Connecticut school shooting. A source inside rehearsals for the NBC late night sketch show told Access Hollywood the touching performance was a... Read more
From ABC News: A Newtown, Conn., priest had the “horrible” job of informing families this morning that their children had been killed in the elementary school massacre. There were 20 children among the 27 people brutally killed the day Adam Lanza, 20, invaded Sandy Hook Elementary School and opened fire on staff and students. Lanza was also found dead in the school. Most of the children were between the ages of 5 and 10, President Obama said on Friday. Medical... Read more
As some of you know, my office is located in the Catholic Center in Manhattan, on First Avenue. On Friday they were decorating the lobby for Christmas – trimming trees and hanging lights and assembling a small wooden stable, the Nativity scene. As I was leaving work, I stopped to take a look. This Nativity scene is a little out of the ordinary. While it has all the usual characters, carved from wood – Mary, Joseph, shepherds, animals — it... Read more
Meet stained glass artist, Deacon Bob Markert in the Louisville Courier-Journal: The pounding of a mallet and the ratcheting of a ladder echoed through the front atrium of Brescia Hall on the Ursuline Campus on a crisp November morning. Bob Markert and Peter Eichhorn were busy installing stained-glass windows designed decades ago by Markert, filled with symbols associated with the Ursuline Sisters of Louisville. Sister Ruth Ann Haunz, an Ursuline Leadership Council member eagerly watching the proceedings, pointed out that... Read more
As some of you know, my office is located in the Catholic Center in Manhattan, on First Avenue. On Friday they were decorating the lobby for Christmas – trimming trees and hanging lights and assembling a small wooden stable, the Nativity scene. As I was leaving work, I stopped to take a look. This Nativity scene is a little out of the ordinary. While it has all the usual characters, carved from wood – Mary, Joseph, shepherds, animals — it... Read more
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