Inspiration Faith & Prayer Health & Wellness Entertainment Love & Family
Newsletters Special Offers

The Deacon's Bench

[My diocese, like many, has instituted new guidelines for receiving Holy Communion, amid growing concerns about the H1N1 virus.  One of those is the suggestion that Catholics, at least until the spring, only receive in the hand, not on the tongue.  Some people in my parish are balking at that.  Others do it, but haphazardly. …

Incredibly, this once heavily Catholic city only has one Catholic high school left. And TIME magazine finds out why: Lunch period at an inner-city all-boys school is an event associated with the sounds of chaos, not classical music. And yet there are definitely strains of Beethoven coming from the piano in the cafeteria at the…

“This new generation seems ideally positioned to address the lamentable tendency in American Catholic life to drive a wedge between the church’s pro-life message and its peace-and-justice commitments. More generally, they can help us find the sane middle between two extremes: What George Weigel correctly calls ‘Catholicism lite,’ meaning a form of the faith sold…

So says Vatican Radio, denying previous reports that the problem was all about the celibacy issue: “There has been widespread speculation, based on supposedly knowledgeable remarks by an Italian correspondent Andrea Tornielli, that the delay in publication of the Apostolic Constitution regarding Personal Ordinariates for Anglicans entering into full communion with the Catholic Church, announced…

Grace Slick — “White Rabbit,” “Somebody to Love,” etc. — just turned 70.  “I grow old. I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled…”   Sigh. 

[This weekend, I’m preaching a special children’s liturgy, which will include a belated commemoration of World Priest Day.  So for those looking for an All Saints homily, I’ve decided to dip into the vault: this is a re-post from my old blog site, from 2007.]   Shortly after he converted to Catholicism in the late…

It’s not unusual for men who are called to police work to feel a similar call to serve others as deacons. Case in point, from Oregon: It was 10 years ago that Martin Larner drove his police motorcycle past St. Joseph Church in Roseburg, saw the cross on top of the building and got an…

An alert reader found this nugget buried among the many propositions that resulted from the just-finished Synod of Bishops of Africa: Permanent Deacons  This Synod has identified the service of Reconciliation justice and peace as the urgent face and form of the apostolic mission of the Church-Family of God in Africa and its Islands. In…

Finally, one ministry where the idea of a clown mass is not as far-fetched as it sounds:  A circus ministry team, which includes a Boston priest, is charged with bringing the word of God to circus performers, people who are constantly on the move due to the demands of their job. “They either live on the…

This is a little out-of-the ordinary: the story of a couple who lived together before getting married, but had a change of heart.   The Denver Catholic Register interviewed them: Western Slope parishioners Mike and Toni (not their real names) have been married for a decade and have several children. Mike works outside the home while…
archives most recent
search this blog
More from Beliefnet and our partners