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The Deacon's Bench

Could one of the most famous all-male bastions at the Vatican be ready to welcome women into the ranks? Maybe: The Vatican’s Swiss Guards will swear in 32 new recruits Wednesday amid suggestions from their new commander that women might one day join their ranks. Col. Daniel Anrig said Tuesday he was open to the…

You never know what you’ll find in the basement, next to the stack of 8-tracks and 33 rpm HiFi albums. Someone evidently unearthed this: a grainy tape (BETA?) of a 22-year-old Susan belting out the classic Streisand tune.

With the pope preparing to embark on his much-anticipated trip to the Holy Land, here’s a look at one tiny — and intriguing — slice of that region that is often overlooked: With just 400 faithful, the Hebrew-speaking Vicariate is dwarfed by the much larger Palestinian Christian community, estimated at some 180,000 in Israel and…

A brilliant art project in England. Take a look.

A high-profile priest in Miami finds himself now embroiled in scandal — and suspended: The Rev. Alberto Cutié, a national figure with movie star looks, was removed from his Miami Beach church Tuesday after photographs appeared in a magazine showing him frolicking with a woman in the sand on a Florida beach. A wildly popular…

It snuck up on me, but my sitemeter at the bottom of this page now tells that there have now been just over one million visitors to The Bench. I’m amazed, incredulous, humbled and grateful beyond words. Thank you for dropping by and weighing in and enduring the slings and arrows of outrageous bloggery, lo…

Catholic Online is offering us some musical food for thought from Deacon Keith Fournier: “The problem with much of what calls itself ‘Christian’ music these days is that it puts ‘God words’ to poor music. Sometimes in so doing it misses the opportunity to truly move human hearts toward God’s Living Word, the One who…

It’s a cold, miserable, rainy morning here in Brooklyn. But my corner of it got suddenly and beautifully brighter after reading this inspiring story from the Chicago Tribune: Born with a disorder that would leave him 3 feet tall and so brittle that coughing could fracture a rib, Sean Stephenson could not walk as a…

…for something wonderful. If this doesn’t make you smile, you haven’t got a pulse. H/T Googling God and The Concord Pastor.

Somehow I missed this news last week, but it seems a noteworthy addition to the ongoing Notre Dame story. Catholic Online reports that it’s the first arrest in connection with the controversy: Pro-life activist Randall Terry was arrested Friday afternoon for trespassing on the Notre Dame University Campus. Early in the day he was issued…
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