The Deacon's Bench
H/T to my blogging comrade and neighbor Fr. Michael Duffy for finding this. Read it all here. Read more
H/T to my blogging comrade and neighbor Fr. Michael Duffy for finding this. Read it all here. Read more
From his weekly column, published today: It seems important to accelerate a serious debate within American Catholicism on whether the Church ought not pre-emptively withdraw from the civil marriage business, its clergy declining to act as agents of government in witnessing marriages for purposes of state law. If the Church were to take this dramatic step now, it would be acting prophetically: it would be challenging the state (and the culture) by underscoring that what the state means by “marriage”... Read more
It’s happening at a seminar in Rome. From CNS: In Eastern Christianity — among both Catholics and Orthodox — a dual vocation to marriage and priesthood are seen as a call “to love more” and to broaden the boundaries of what a priest considers to be his family, said Russian Catholic Father Lawrence Cross. Father Cross, a professor at the Australian Catholic University in Melbourne, was one of the speakers at the Chrysostom Seminar in Rome Nov. 13, a seminar... Read more
Can I hear an “Amen”? Details: The U.S. bishops, on a voice vote, endorsed the sainthood cause of Dorothy Day, the co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement, who was famously quoted as saying, “Don’t call me a saint. I don’t want to be dismissed so easily.” The endorsement came at the end of a canonically required consultation that took place Nov. 13, the second day of the bishops’ annual fall general assembly in Baltimore. Under the terms of the 2007... Read more
Check this out and amaze your friends at this year’s office Christmas party. Read more
They were ordained by Bishop William Patrick Callahan on October 27. The men shown above are, from left to right: Ray Heitzinger, Greg Kaiser, Bryan Hilts, Bob Reidl, Erv Burkhardt, Bishop William Callahan, Tom Skemp, Bob Zietlow, Tom Tierney, Jerry Ruesch. Congratulations and welcome, brothers! Ad multos annos! Read more
From CNS: The U.S. bishops approved their first new document in 30 years on preaching Nov. 13, the second day of their annual fall general assembly in Baltimore. The document, “Preaching the Mystery of Faith: The Sunday Homily,” encourages preachers to connect the Sunday homily with people’s daily lives. The vote was 227-11, with four abstentions. Approval required two-thirds of the membership of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, or 182 votes. The document was prepared by the USCCB Committee... Read more
Deacon wife and FOB Paula Gonzales Rohrbacher from Alaska sent me the picture seen here, from a retreat she and her husband — Deacon and iconographer Charles Rohrbacher — gave a couple years ago. Since I don’t post much on deacons up in Alaska, I asked her to tell me about this group. She wrote back: The Yupik Deacon program was established in the Fairbanks Diocese to serve the people of the remote villages. They minister to the people by visiting... Read more
From The Age in Australia: A defiant Cardinal George Pell has blamed a smear campaign against the Catholic Church for public pressure that led to a royal commission into child sex abuse. The Archbishop of Sydney said a commission into the Catholic Church was not needed, but he welcomed the broader inquiry announced by Prime Minister Julia Gillard on Monday night as ”an opportunity to clear the air, to separate fact from fiction”. He attacked a ”persistent press campaign” and... Read more
Elizabeth Scalia writes in First Things, striking a chord or two of realism and common-sense spiritual hope: Like Moses, we let pride overcome our mission. The conservatives—obsessing on greatness—refused to acknowledge any weakness. But there is always weakness; not admitting mistakes is the greatest of them. By refusing to cede error or suggest moderation, the right allowed the left to grab on to moral arguments so few were making—about greed, and selfishness, and triumphalism—and to pervert them through the filter... Read more
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