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The Deacon's Bench

Polls close Saturday! You can view the nominees right here. If I win, I promise to mention you in my acceptance speech…

Hot on the heels of this news of a possible saint in nearby New Jersey, Maryland (my home state — go Terps!) may soon make way for one, as well. From the Catholic Review in Baltimore: Go home and prepare to die. That’s what Mary Ellen Heibel’s doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in…

From St. Paul comes this great vocation story about a man who had his head in the clouds, but kept his feet on the ground: Renaissance man Deacon Douglas Ebert, 62, is moving on to a new vocation that has been calling him for a long time. After working as a commercial airline pilot for…

“I would really love to continue the perception that Catholicism has a very human face, that we’re clearly able to laugh at ourselves, that we are actually not afraid of being criticized and we are not going to get on a high horse.” — Archbishop Vincent Nichols,who today becomes the 11th Archbishop of Westminster.

This story escaped my attention last weekend, but it’s something to wonder about — and, maybe, worry about. From the Washington Post: PBS stations are debating the limits of one of public television’s basic commandments: Thou shalt not broadcast religious programming. The discussion, some station managers fear, could lead to a ban on broadcasts of…

While Ireland braces for what some say will be a devastating report on sexual abuse by priests on Wednesday, Catholics in neighboring Scotland are confronting a different crisis. The country’s last seminary is about to close its doors. And members of what could be the last generation of priests in Scotland are offering their thoughts:…

In the New York Times, of all places, the conservative commentator Ross Douthat has taken off after Dan “Angels & Demons” Brown and his distinctly populist brand of theology: In the Brownian worldview, all religions — even Roman Catholicism — have the potential to be wonderful, so long as we can get over the idea…

“We need to foster worship which stuns, which leaves the newcomer, long-time practicing Catholic, above all the fallen-away simply thunder stuck. Worship must at some point leave people speechless in awe. We need language and music and gesture which in its beauty floods the mind with light even while it swells the heart to bursting.…

Luis Carlos Ochoa Tello, right, hugs his father, Miguel Ochoa Espinoza, after his priestly ordination at the Cathedral of St. Peter in Wilmington, Del., May 16. PHOTO: by Don Blake, The Dialog, via CNS

Among the most insightful commentaries in the wake of Notre Dame is this one, sent to me from a reader. It comes from the Wall Street Journal’s William McGurn: Probably Notre Dame is rich enough that it can safely thumb its institutional nose at the 70 or so bishops who publicly challenged the university for…
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