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

The Deacon's Bench

That’s how the usually fair-minded Laurie Goodstein describes the Vatican’s visitation of American nuns in Thursday’s New York Times: The Vatican is quietly conducting two sweeping investigations of American nuns, a development that has startled and dismayed nuns who fear they are the targets of a doctrinal inquisition. Nuns were the often-unsung workers who helped…

Leave it to James Martin to unearth this intriguing bit of Jesuit trivia, tied to the sad news that Karl Malden has gone to the great Actors Studio in the sky: News today that Karl Malden died at the age of 97 (I liked him best in “The Streets of San Francisco,” where he played…

Pull me in. Now. Please. Read all about it from the safety of your desktop right here. UPDATE: You can also find more information, and more heart-stopping pictures, at this link. I’d recommend sitting down first.

Were you nervous?“Yes!”Did you pray last night?“Yes!”Your outfit is perfect.“My mother picked it out!”What is Pope Benedict XVI like?“Nice! Really nice!”Did the Pope say anything?“Yes!”What did he say?“God bless!”Did you say anything to him?“I said ‘God bless you.’ And ‘thank you.’ At least I think I said that!”What did you think when the people burst…

From the In My Own Backyard Desk: a generous and anonymous benefactor is giving back to the Church that gave him so much — and a group of recently unemployed nuns is reaping the benefits. The scoop, in the NY Daily News: A godsend for poor Brooklyn students is also turning into a miracle for…

…what may be the most spectacularly depressing movie of all time! Really. Roland Emmerich — who obliterated much of the world in “Independence Day,” and then went back to do it again with “The Day After Tomorrow” — turns his dark imagination toward the End of Days and post-9/11 angst with something called “2012.” The…

Catholic News Service is running a series of reflections for the Year for Priests, and this caught my eye: one pastor’s brief outline of his “day off.” Take a look: This, in fact, was how yesterday went. It started at 8 a.m. at a board meeting of our local Catholic hospital, where the discussion is…

That sound you hear is me, slapping the desk and laughing hysterically. Honestly. How can anyone take seriously something like this: Researchers at the University of Michigan have concluded that the love stories told in classic Disney and other G-rated children’s films – such as the Little Mermaid – are partially to blame for the…

Conventional wisdom holds that the South is where Mother Church is growing and thriving — and these figures out of Atlanta seem to bear that out: The fruit is considerable — in the heart of the Bible Belt, the North Georgia church has seen a more than fivefold increase in membership over the last two…

Not the person you may be thinking of. Take a look below at the man considered the originator of the moves Michael Jackson immortalized. The classic steps appear at the end.
archives most recent
search this blog
More from Beliefnet and our partners