At long last, Catholic Near East Welfare Association (CNEWA) and its magazineONE (where I serve as Executive Editor) now has its very own blog. Ladies and gentlemen, I’m proud to introduce you to ONE-TO-ONE. It’s still very much a work-in-progress — among other things, we’re hoping to launch an RSS feed in the days ahead — but I think the blog has tremendous potential and will help let more people know about the great work CNEWA is undertaking around the... Read more
And that’s becoming even more common than divorce, according to this new report: The number of Americans with children who live together without marrying has increased twelvefold since 1970, according to a report released Tuesday. The report states that children now are more likely to have unmarried parents than divorced ones. The report was published by the National Marriage Project, an initiative at the University of Virginia, and the Institute for American Values, two partisan groups that advocate for strengthening... Read more
The confessionals pictured above are where the sacrament of reconciliation will be celebrated — and where this extraordinary move may now take place. Details: The Cardinal Archbishop of Madrid, Antonio Maria Rouco Varela, has granted all of the 2,000 priests attending World Youth Day this week the special power to the lift the excommunication and to grant absolution in confession to those who have committed the sin of abortion. According to the Catholic Church’s Code of Canon Law, any person... Read more
They are literally a product of this international event. CNS has details: You might say Steve and Nicole Kerekes have really lived the World Youth Day experience. The California couple met at World Youth Day in Denver in 1993, even though Steve Kerekes said that, at the time, he wasn’t particularly religious. Today, the couple have seven children with one more on the way — and all of them are in Madrid this week for World Youth Day. Steve and... Read more
Ah, New York! A performance that’s really Standing Room Only. Especially during rush hour. Find out all about it here. And catch a scene, below. Read more
An Iraqi man inspects damages at the Mar Afram Syriac Orthodox Church following an explosion in the northern city of Kirkuk as a series of nationwide attacks hit the country. The daylong wave of violence was the deadliest in the country this year. Iraqi Christians now fear for their lives — but they aren’t the only targets. Yesterday’s assault also included an execution carried out in a mosque, at the height of Ramadan. According to news reports: Around 8 p.m.,... Read more
It’s “concept dining” in which the concept is: sign your life away before picking up a fork: Get your pen out if you want to have dinner at Rogue 24, because first you have to sign a two-page contract to cement your reservation at the newly opened conceptual restaurant serving only 24- and 16-course tasting menus in the middle of an alleyway. And if you’re keyed up about snagging reservations at the buzzy new restaurant, don’t get so excited that... Read more
He made that statement during an interview with a local newspaper yesterday: Many children from broken homes are born “losers” and so deprived of love that they grow up to be dysfunctional adults, according to a Catholic bishop. Bishop of Elphin Christopher Jones said that during his 17 years working in social services in Sligo he had seen the damage wrought on children as a result of marriage breakdown. The bishop, who is president of the Catholic marriage care service... Read more
That’s the message of a recent seminar on homiletics for priests and deacons. CNS has details: For eight days at Loyola University New Orleans, three priests and five deacons absorbed the cool mathematics and internal symmetry of good preaching. Just as Moses descended from Mount Sinai with Ten Commandments chiseled on two stone tablets, the rules laid out by Father Roy Shelly and Deborah Wilhelm of the Diocese of Monterey, Calif., while not etched in permanent marker, are boundaries worthy... Read more
The sports world is wrapping its collective head around this surprising news: it turns out that a well-known player for the fabled Brooklyn Dodgers, a lifelong Roman Catholic, is in fact Jewish — and has close relatives who died in Auschwitz. The New York Times reporter Joshua Prager has the scoop: Earlier this summer, Ralph Branca met me at a country club in Westchester where he lives, extending the arthritic hand that 60 years ago this October threw the baseball... Read more
The Deacon's Bench
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