The Deacon's Bench
Featuring CeeLo Green and …the Muppets! It includes a fun remix of the classic “Mah Na Mah Na,” plus a little jingly jive from CeeLo. Brace yourself for an earworm. Read more
Featuring CeeLo Green and …the Muppets! It includes a fun remix of the classic “Mah Na Mah Na,” plus a little jingly jive from CeeLo. Brace yourself for an earworm. Read more
The world did not end, and people actually seem to be just fine with it. Details: American Catholics have widely accepted the changes in the Roman Catholic Mass to reflect a closer translation of the Latin that was introduced last year, even if these revisions may signal greater centralization in the church, according to a new survey by Catholic University of America researcher Anthony Pogarelc. The changes to the liturgy introduced by the Vatican included a more literal translation of... Read more
From the Catholic Herald: A Catholic aid worker who was kidnapped for three months in Sudan has told The Catholic Herald that his faith kept him going and that he refused to convert to Islam. Patrick Noonan, a 48-year-old former soldier from Bradford, was kidnapped by anti-government rebels in South Darfur on March 6 and kept in chains and fed only oranges and camel milk during part of his three-month captivity. Mr Noonan said: “I was isolated in a corner... Read more
Here we go again: Rhode Island will go ahead with plans to hold a “holiday tree” lighting ceremony in the state capital despite controversy last year over Governor Lincoln Chafee’s decision to avoid using the word “Christmas” in reference the tree. The announcement on Tuesday that the state would hold a tree-lighting ceremony in Providence came just 24 hours after the governor’s spokeswoman said the annual event had been scrubbed. Last year, protesters interrupted the ceremony with demands the conifer... Read more
A local paper in Mercer Island, Washington looks at one man’s journey to the diaconate: On Oct. 27, Islander and former Starbucks employee, Frank DiGirolamo, recited vows and allegiance to the faith of the Roman Catholic Church beneath the splendor of the soaring Italian Renaissance ceilings of the 105-year-old St. James Cathedral in Seattle. Amid the pomp of the ancient rites of ordination, DiGirolamo, a married man, became an ordained member of the Catholic Church clergy… …DiGirolamo, now 45, first... Read more
From the Associated Press: Not even the Vatican is immune from the economic crisis. For the first time, the Vatican is seeking funds directly from pilgrims, collectors and tourists to pay for the ambitious restoration of the 17th century Bernini colonnade surrounding St. Peter’s Square. The Vatican’s Philatelic and Numismatic Office, which sells commemorative coins and stamps featuring popes, saints and the like, is offering a special (EURO)20 ($26) stamp and certificate package to help offset a recession-induced drop in... Read more
I’m working my way through Dorothy Day’s diaries, collected in “The Duty of Delight,“ and among all the mundane details of daily life —whom she met, what she prayed, when she ate—the woman being touted for sainthood by New York’s Cardinal Archbishop reveals a distaste, even a disdain, for some clergy. There’s this, for example, from July of 1938: Speaking of being hypocritical, while I ate this noon I remembered the set up at the Archbishop’s palace, the delicate wines,... Read more
Elizabeth Scalia at First Things offers some beautiful, hope-filled words of wisdom in the wake of the election: We begin, I think, by giving simple thanks to God for the election—without conditions or sly assumptions that we know anything or are somehow colluding with Providence. That sounds counterintuitive, I know, but whenever I think a circumstance precludes gratitude, I remember the story of two sisters offering prayerful thanks for the fleas that infested their barracks in a Nazi concentration camp.... Read more
Details: Atheists, clearly agitated that Christians purportedly “stole” various holiday traditions from pagans, have come up with a solution: A potentially-offensive “natural nativity scene” that removes baby Jesus and replaces traditional Bible characters with some eyebrow-raising alternatives. The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) is behind the spectacle, which emerged this week as part of a diorama inside the Wisconsin state capitol. The angel that typically graces the nativity is replaced with an astronaut. And the wise-men – prominent figures in the Biblical account of Jesus’ birth — are... Read more
The New York Times takes a look at the latest efforts to promote the sainthood cause of Dorothy Day: Dorothy Day is a hero of the Catholic left, a fiery 20th-century social activist who protested war, supported labor strikes and lived voluntarily in poverty as she cared for the needy. But Day has found a seemingly unlikely champion in New York’s conservative archbishop, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, who has breathed new life into an effort to declare the Brooklyn native... Read more
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