The Deacon's Bench
This popped up over the weekend and is making the rounds of the interwebs. Take a couple minutes and watch — and then send it around. It comes from Americans United for Life. UPDATE: Link has been fixed. It should play now. Read more
This popped up over the weekend and is making the rounds of the interwebs. Take a couple minutes and watch — and then send it around. It comes from Americans United for Life. UPDATE: Link has been fixed. It should play now. Read more
Details: A group of Democratic-leaning Catholics on Wednesday (Feb. 29) released a 2012 voter guide that seeks to expand the concept of “pro-life issues” beyond abortion to also include war, euthanasia and poverty. The nine-page guide from the group Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good — one of the first to be released for the 2012 elections — highlights economic issues as top concerns Catholics should weigh as they consider their vote. The guide is markedly different from others... Read more
While we’ve been distracted by the the communion controversy down in Washington, some interesting news on a related topic broke overseas: Archbishop Vincent Nichols has reaffirmed the Diocese of Westminster’s pastoral provision for gay Catholics following accusations that it provides a platform for dissent from Church teaching. In a statement issued today, the Archbishop of Westminster “reaffirmed the intention and purpose” of the pastoral provision for Catholics at the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption, Warwick Street. The pastoral... Read more
It happened at Hastings College in Nebraska. Details: The service was once a regular offering at the college. It was moved off campus to Holy Cross Chapel at the Crosier Park Professional Center about a decade ago. Eventually, the college Mass was replaced in its evening time slot at the chapel by services for the Vietnamese and Hispanic communities. Jenna Diedrich, 20, a junior biology major and ACT [A Catholic Thing, a club on campus] member, helped initiate the movement... Read more
“Whatever we do, and however strongly we feel, we do it charitably, we do it civilly. We don’t judge the motives of other people. We just try, in a confident, peaceful, inviting way, to make our position felt, to invite other people to respect it.” — Cardinal Timothy Dolan this morning. Read the whole story. Read more
An interesting look at the candidate’s transformation from “nominal Catholic” to conservative icon, in Sunday’s New York Times: Rick Santorum was, in his own words, a “nominal Catholic” when he met Karen Garver, a neonatal nurse and law student, in 1988. As they made plans to marry and he decided to enter politics, she sent him to her father for advice. Dr. Kenneth L. Garver was a Pittsburgh pediatrician who specialized in medical genetics. The patriarch of a large Roman... Read more
A deacon from Rhode Island, Paul Iacono, dropped me a line several days ago, alerting me to an ongoing project he and his wife have undertaken, called the Fra Angelico Institute for the Sacred Arts: The purpose of the Institute is to unite personal prayer, and creativity within the sacred arts, to the new evangelization of the Church. We hoped to create a model which is replicable in other parishes and Dioceses around the nation… …The Fra Angelico Institute for the Sacred... Read more
He spoke on the subject today at a diocesan convocation. Details: Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan told Roman Catholics on Saturday that in an era when the church was fighting the government on several fronts, they needed to make their voices heard more clearly in the political sphere. Speaking at a diocesan convocation on public policy here, Cardinal Dolan, who is the archbishop of New York and president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, said, “We are called to... Read more
Another priest has added his voice to the discussion about the Archdiocese of Washington communion controversy: A priest who writes on faith and culture emphasized the need to balance respect for the Eucharist with pastoral sensitivity. “These are delicate matters,” said Msgr. Charles Pope, who blogs about culture and current events for the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. He explained to CNA on March 2 that it “requires some judgment on the part of the priest” to apply Church teaching on when to... Read more
I posted a few pictures of the devastation of St. Joseph’s Church in Illinois a couple days ago. Now, there’s more: Elizabeth Schmitt, who planned to get married in May at St. Joseph Church in Ridgway, never imagined she would be picking up debris from the gothic church that was completely destroyed in the Feb. 29 tornado. Tornadoes swept through parts of the Midwest and the South, killing at least a dozen people and injuring more than 100 in Illinois,... Read more
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