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The Deacon's Bench

That’s how a woman by the name of Heidi Schlumpf refers to MCPF Stephen Colbert in this essay from NCR: I enjoy satire as much, or maybe even more, than the average person. I even guiltily laughed at The Onion’s post-9/11 coverage (“Not knowing what else to do, woman bakes American flag cake”). But like…

We have just heard the climax of the Greatest Story Ever Told. We hear it every Palm Sunday – and we will hear it again on Good Friday. It is a story of monumental suffering, and love, that has been proclaimed from pulpits around the world for centuries. It speaks for itself. There’s nothing I…

“As you go forth in your preparation, you will spend much time preparing homilies. But even more important is the preparation of the homilist. That means, we are called to preach who we are and what we are. We preach what we know…and what we know is that God loves us, and that is the…

It’s interesting to speculate, and John Thavis, over at Catholic News Service, reports that people around the Vatican are being fairly tight-lipped about the controversy. But he does offer these compelling nuggets: Non-Americans at the Vatican tend to see the issue in a different light, I think. For one thing, they seem more comfortable with…

For those who are interested … We’ll be discussing the Notre Dame mess on “In the Arena” this weekend. You can watch a live stream of the channel right here. “In the Arena” airs Sunday night at 7:30 ET, with a repeat at 11:30. Early next week, it will be archived and you can watch…

The great Triple D — Deacon Doctor (William) Ditewig — sent this my way, and I’m happy to post it: a reflection on Deacon John Pistone, that Bill penned for the nation’s diocesan diaconate directors: “Standing on the shoulders of giants.” We’ve all heard this saying from the 12th Century, which acknowledges the humble truth…

Some weeks back, I wrote about the challenge of singing the Exultet — and I’ve gone on record describing my own experience scaling that mountain for the first time. Now the refrain has been picked up by the Catholic Review in Baltimore: Every Easter Vigil, deacons throughout the archdiocese face one of the most challenging…

Those clever people who brought you the sensational Stop Good TV commercials (which put a certain diocesan TV channel on the map) are at it again. Below is a campaign for the Dioceses of Brooklyn and Rockville Centre, to draw people to church for confession before Easter. You can visit the website for more fun…

This obituary from the Philadelphia Daily News caught my eye: it’s about a priest who was ordained late in life and, in a rare exception, served as a permanent deacon for a number of years before entering the priesthood: The Rev. Msgr. Albert V. Norrell was a priest before he became a priest. That is,…

A man who might well be reckoned a giant in the diaconate community has left us. A suburban Chicago paper takes note: One of the most influential figures in the Archdiocese of Chicago’s program to prepare men to become ordained deacons has died. John Pistone, a 30-year deacon at St. Thomas of Villanova Church in…
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