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The Deacon's Bench

Happy Anniversary, brothers!

Some people are starting to think so. The local press is reporting that an investigation is underway to determine if a nun who died over 20 years ago is responsible for a miracle: If Mother Mary Angeline Teresa McCrory is to one day become a saint, the miracle investigation formally opened here Monday, May 17,…

Someone has taken the time and trouble to collect and edit the sermons of one of the most celebrated pulpit-pounders of the ’70s, William Sloane Coffin. I found this review in the online edition of the Christian Century: John Ames, 76-year-old Congregationalist minister and narrator of Marilynne Robinson’s stunning novel Gilead, keeps his old sermons…

Surfing around for analysis on the Notre Dame speech, I thought this observation, from Deacon Keith Fournier, put it all in context: “I must admit that one line from Fr. Jonathan Morris, a guest commentator for Fox (who was excoriated by Randall Terry in the FOX broadcast) raised an analogy which broke through the veneer…

The first reports are now popping up about President Obama’s commencement address at Notre Dame. This, from the New York Times: President Obama directly confronted America’s deep divide over abortion on Sunday as he appealed to partisans on both sides to find ways to respect one another’s basic decency and even work together to reduce…

What could be more timely than this? The Notre Dame Glee Club singing the school’s beautiful anthem, “Notre Dame, Our Mother.” This day, let’s remember the school, its students, its president, and the school’s commencement speaker in our prayers. Notre Dame, our Mother,tender, strong and true,proudly in the heavensgleams thy gold and blue.Glory’s mantle cloaks…

One of the more colorful and combative characters on the Catholic scene was profiled in the New York Times recently: the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue: William A. Donohue, the perennially indignant president of the Catholic League for Civil and Religious Rights, had no sooner finished a conference call with reporters Wednesday, in which he demanded…

Several months ago, I posted the moving story of Fr. Kim, and told of his remarkable conversion and journey to the priesthood. (I even preached a homily about him during Advent.) His son got in touch with me recently and shared the pictures below: a memorial dedicated to his father at his old church. Needless…

A reader alerted me to the disturbing video below, showing the arrest of an 80-year-old priest yesterday on the campus of Notre Dame. I was struck by this for a number of reasons. Just this morning, I took part in a pro-life mass and march at my parish, led by the legendary Msgr. Phil Reilly,…

His name was Thomas S. Vander Woude. He was a pilot during Vietnam and, after the war, flew commercial airliners. After his retirement in Virginia, he liked to spend his time farming, and volunteering and doting on his children and grandchildren. He attended mass every day and served as a sacristan in his parish. He…
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