Flashback: A church group that owns beachfront property discriminated against a lesbian couple by not allowing them to rent the locale for their civil union ceremony, a New Jersey department ruled Monday in a case that has become a flash point in the nation’s gay rights battle. The New Jersey Division on Civil Rights said its investigation found that the refusal of the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association to rent the oceanfront spot to the couple for their same-sex union... Read more
We know where the Catholic Church stands on the issue of gay marriage. But how about other faiths? Jaweed Kaleem at Huffington Post has an interesting wrap-up, in light of Wednesday’s SCOTUS decisions: Most of the nation’s biggest religious groups, such as the Roman Catholic Church (68 million members), Southern Baptist Convention (16 million), United Methodist Church (8 million) and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (6 million) do not perform same-sex marriages, and have drafted resolutions or official... Read more
Elizabeth Scalia has some strong ideas on the topic, and quotes the White House statement: I applaud the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act. This was discrimination enshrined in law. It treated loving, committed gay and lesbian couples as a separate and lesser class of people. The Supreme Court has righted that wrong, and our country is better off for it. We are a people who declared that we are all created equal — and... Read more
A detail about today’s SCOTUS story you may not know. HuffPo has the details: As millions celebrate today the Supreme Court’s striking down of the so-called Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), many will be giving thanks to Edie Windsor, the 83-year-old plaintiff in the case, and her lawyer, Roberta Kaplan. What most people will not know, however, is the instrumental role that a few members of the New York City chapter of DignityUSA played in this historic moment. DignityUSA is an... Read more
From a statement released a short time ago: The U.S. Supreme Court decisions June 26 striking down part of the Defense of Marriage Act and refusing to rule on the merits of a challenge to California’s Proposition 8 mark a “tragic day for marriage and our nation,” said Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco, chair of the U.S. bishops’ Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense... Read more
From today’s General Audience: Today I would like briefly to refer to one more picture that helps us to illustrate the mystery of the Church: that of the temple (cf. Lumen Gentium, 6). What does the word, ‘temple’ call to mind? It makes us think of a building, a construction. In particular, it recalls to many minds the history of the People of Israel narrated in the Old Testament. In Jerusalem, the great Temple of Solomon was the locus of... Read more
As you may recall, I spent most of last week at the 2013 Catholic Media Conference in Denver. If you missed my Facebook posts — what, you weren’t hanging on my every word? —here’s a quick photographic recap. Moments after we landed at the Denver International Airport on Tuesday, a tornado hit. They sent everyone in the airport down to the basement “Tornado Shelter.” Several people were able to get cell phone service and download pictures of the storm clouds... Read more
Details: In a quiet area on the 5th floor of Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale and at St. Catherine’s Rehabilitation Hospital in Hialeah Gardens, rabbis minister to dying Jewish patients. Rabbis from Catholic Hospice have been serving patients in the L’chaim Jewish Hospice program for 10 years. “We recognized a need because of the large Jewish population in South Florida,” said Gael Silverman, director of professional services for L’chaim Jewish Hospice. Catholic Hospice plans to open two facilities that will care for... Read more
Maybe, in fact, of the decade. Really. Spray this stuff on clothes, or even an iPhone, and never worry about moisture again. Or so they say. Watch this demonstration video and prepare to be amazed. As TIME magazine put it: “If you watch one video today, watch this one. You won’t be sorry.” Read more
Fr. Dwight Longenecker has invited Deacon Richard Ballard as a guest blogger this week over at Standing on my Head. He writes of a chance encounter with a habited nun at a hospital when he was seven-years-old — a meeting that may well have changed his life: With a variety of comic books in hand, I was ensconced in the corner of the lobby to idle away the time awaiting the return of my family. It was then that I... Read more
The Deacon's Bench
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