Here’s a classic, just made for congregational singing. With a royal wedding looming upon us, let’s give the royal treatment of this great old hymn, from a service celebrating the Queen’s 60th anniversary of her coronation a few years back. Some background: “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty” is a hymn based on Joachim Neander’s German hymn “Lobe den Herren, den mächtigen König der Ehren”, published in 1680. John Julian in his A Dictionary of Hymnology calls the German original... Read more
I haven’t seen many of these cross my desk when I meet families about baptisms, but here they are, from the Social Security Administration: Liam has bumped Noah as the top name for America’s boys, while Emma hangs on for the fourth straight year as the girls’ favorite. The Social Security Administration on Friday morning released its list of names given to U.S. babies in 2017. Michael fell out of the top 10 for the first time since World War II. Emily also is out of... Read more
From the vault, my homily for Ascension Thursday 2015: This glorious feast of the Ascension—one of the “glorious mysteries” we pray on the rosary—asks each of us to do something glorious. It asks us to rise with Christ, to defy the laws of gravity. It asks us to defy the world. To change the world. Where do we begin? The answer has been before us all along. Over the last few weeks, what has been the one recurring theme in... Read more
The scoop, via The Catholic Herald: Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, who gave a speech at the Gala, told Sirius XM that he had lent Rihanna her jewel-encrusted papal mitre. The Wrap reported that “Cardinal Dolan Says Rihanna Borrowed One of His Miters for Met Ball”. The story has nearly 650 retweets and more than 2000 Facebook shares, was repeated by Time and made it onto the Drudge Report, one of the biggest aggregator websites. It is, however, based on a misapprehension. Listen to... Read more
From The Hollywood Reporter: Have the French found God? Given the crop of projects being shopped at the Cannes film market that features Christian-themed narratives — notably An Interview With God, Samson and God Bless the Broken Road — and with Wim Wenders’ doc Pope Francis: A Man of His Word playing as an official selection at the festival, there are signs that fare once ignored by international buyers and Cannes programmers is receiving a warm welcome. In addition, the U.S. breakout I Can Only Imagine is heating up... Read more
The New York Times conservative columnist Ross Douthat offers his take on the controversial Met Gala, and what it says about the state of the Catholic Church, which he feels has done too much to accommodate itself to the world and lost something in the process: Like Proust’s “caravans of swells” attending liturgical performances, the attendees at the Met were paying a cultural homage to the aesthetic riches of the Roman Church — when, of course, they weren’t sexing them... Read more
I love stories like this. From San Jose’s The Valley Catholic: Thomas Flowers, SJ, son of Deacon Phil and Sarah Flowers of Morgan Hill, was ordained a transitional Deacon at the Church of the Gesù in Rome on April 3 by Cardinal Walter Kasper. The younger Deacon Flowers was ordained along with fifteen other Jesuits, his classmates at the Collegio Internationale del Gesù, in the presence of Father Arturo Sosa, the General Superior of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). Deacon Flowers... Read more
A lot of ink has been spilled about this controversial evening, but I was struck by what the Cardinal Archbishop of New York had to say at the press conference just beforehand. This comes from his blog: What’s the Church doing here? What is the Cardinal-Archbishop of New York doing here? Well, because the Church and “the Catholic imagination,” are all about truth, goodness, and beauty… That’s why we have great schools… to teach the truth; That’s why we love and... Read more
From John Allen at Crux, an update on a story that generated significant buzz last week: Anyone who’s covered the Vatican for a while knows that a good chunk of the job isn’t so much reporting the actual news, but debunking “fake news” that others have shot out into the ether. We got an example this week, with a bogus story that Saudi Arabia had entered into an agreement with the Vatican to support the construction of Christian churches in... Read more
From America: Over 500 respondents took part in our informal survey on Catholic motherhood, conducted via America’s email newsletter and social media platforms. Twenty-five percent told America that one or more of their children had left the church, and only 1 percent said that one of their children had entered the priesthood or a religious order. The quarter of respondents whose children left the church provided some clear reasons for their departure. The sexual abuse crisis, instances of bullying at Catholic schools,... Read more
The Deacon's Bench
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