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The Deacon's Bench

I’m headed to Huntington, Long Island this afternoon for my annual diocesan deacon retreat. Things will be quiet on The Bench. But you will all be in my prayers, in one way or another. I’m taking my camera, and hope to take a few pictures to share with you when I get back. Meantime, blessings,…

People crowd into a job fair in New Brunswick, New Jersey on January 7, 2009. From AP/Mel Evans The economic news this morning went from grim to grimmer, with unemployment hitting a 16-year high. Yesterday, the Concord Pastor offered this timely prayer for a friend who had just lost his job. It concludes with the…

The brave new world gets braver, and scarier, every day. From the world of medicine: The first child in Britain known to have been screened as an embryo to ensure she did not carry a cancer gene was born Friday, a spokesman for University College London told CNN. Genetic screening allows lab-fertilized embryos to be…

Hot on the heels of the Madoff scandal comes this story about a businessman who allegedly bilked investors out of millions using a similar scheme — and who specifically targeted Catholics: An 82-year-old businessman was charged Thursday with running a Ponzi scheme that took in at least $17 million from a clientele gleaned largely through…

From across The Pond comes this sobering news about the startling drop in Catholic marriages: The number of marriages in Roman Catholic churches in Britain has fallen by a quarter since the start of the decade to just 9,950 last year. This is a 24 per cent fall on the figure for 2000, when there…

This guy set up a camera to record what his cat was doing all night. I can’t help but wonder if the cat now sleeps outside. Do you think Pope Benedict has these problems?

Oops. The inventor of the pill — or, rather, The Pill — now says his famous creation was a mistake: Eighty-five-year-old Carl Djerassi the Austrian chemist who helped invent the contraceptive pill, now says that his co-creation has led to a “demographic catastrophe.” In an article published by the Vatican this week, the head of…

In Wichita — where the lineman, I think, is still on the line — they have an astounding 46 seminarians in formation for the priesthood. This, in a diocese with only 120,000 Catholics. How’d they do it? A priest, Fr. Michael Simone, weighs in with some ideas: All vocations are the result of a call…

Those were the words in the subject line of an e-mail just sent to me by The Anchoress. Fr. Richard John Neuhaus died early this morning from cancer. He was 72. Over at First Things, there is this poignant note: My tears are not for him—for he knew, all his life, that his Redeemer lives,…

Must be the post-holiday slump that leads to things like this. BTW: Patrick McNamara’s blog on church history is truly terrific reading. Check it out.
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