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

The Deacon's Bench

I finally got my print edition of the National Catholic Register this week, and this story jumped off the page: a one-of-a-kind vocation story that proves, once again, that God does indeed have a sense of humor. Take a look: Joan Rivers kept asking Bill Quinlivan when he was going to be ordained. Yes, that…

Another sign of the times. You can’t make this stuff up: A novice nun is suing her ex-boyfriend in Italy after he uploaded pictures of her naked on Facebook. The 31-year-old woman who lives in Turin said she was devastated when she saw the pictures, taken in summer 2006 during a holiday in Sicily, on…

Everyone is getting all excited about the 40th anniversary of the moon landing. How about the 30th birthday of the Happy Meal? The kids’ meal was first introduced nationally in 1979 with a Circus Wagon Train theme and tried to attract younger customers with a McDoodler stencil, puzzle lock, McWrist wallet, ID bracelet, spinning tops…

I’m not sure what implications this might have for Catholics, but it’s a disturbing prospect nonetheless: Should your child’s teacher wear a turban, a hijab, a kippah or other “religious dress’? The state of Oregon doesn’t think so. The Oregon Workplace Religious Freedom Act, now awaiting the governor’s signature, requires all employers to let workers…

Father, thank you, especially for letting me fly this flight.Thank you for the privilege of being able to be in this position, to be up in this wondrous place, seeing all these many startling, wonderful things that you have created. Help guide and direct all of us that we may shape our lives to be…

Some months back, I remember reading about a wave of homiletic plagiarism that was hitting, of all places, Poland. But it’s more widespread (especially these days) than many people in the pews may think. And it’s not just Catholics, as the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports: Ministers moving to a new church have a long tradition of…

Real life stories of redemption and healing don’t get much better than this. How long until Lifetime turns it into a movie? From the Los Angeles Times: It’s another beautiful day in paradise and I’m out on the ocean, riding waves with a former national surfing champion and onetime prostitute who’s about to join a…

The good people at America magazine have devoted much of this current issue to the ministry of the diaconate. (I mentioned something about that earlier.) Now they’re asking for some response. When you have a moment, check out this link to the deacon articles by Your Humble Blogger, Bill Ditewig and Scott Dodge. Then toss…

The culinary world has a new star — and it’s not someone on the Food Network. Take a look: Emerging from the quiet of her convent, Sister Anastazja Pustelnik was confronted by a jarring image — her smiling face on posters plastered around town to hawk the cookbooks that have made the 59-year-old nun one…

Over the last few days, we’ve been hearing a lot about the anniversary of the moon landing, which happened 40 years ago Monday. A lot of us can remember where we were when it happened, and where we were when we watched the first person walk on the moon. I remember being sound asleep in…
archives most recent
search this blog
More from Beliefnet and our partners