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The Deacon's Bench

You may recall the celebrated (and in some quarters, notorious) Maryknoll priest who took part in a woman’s ordination service some weeks back. Well, he’s in the news again: Maryknoll Fr. Roy Bourgeois has been threatened with excommunication by the Vatican’s Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith for his support of women’s ordination, according…

Or so you might think…but I suspect his is a nice shade of Apple white… H/T The Papist

This is a not-insignificant development down at the bishop’s gathering in Baltimore — and one that we can only hope will have far-reaching acceptance and implications: In a gesture with clear implications for debates over abortion, the U.S. bishops this morning voted on a new “Order for the Blessing of a Child in the Womb,”…

The always-interesting Michael Paulson at the Boston Globe has just posted an interview with Beantown’s cardinal archbishop, Sean O’Malley, in which he discusses the election, abortion, and a raftload of other things: Q: So many bishops spoke out on abortion in recent weeks, and yet a majority of Catholics voted for Barack Obama. What do…

Sharif, who knows 40 commands, has helped Jeffrey Adams adjust to his prosthetic leg, after he was wounded in Iraq. You can read his story, and others, here, from this morning’s New York Times. Photo: by Alan Polzner, for the New York Times.

“The great French preacher Lacordaire once said the vocation of a soldier is next in dignity to the priesthood, not only because it commissioned him to defend justice on the field of battle and order on the field of peace, but also because it called him to the spirit and intention of sacrifice.” +++ “It…

“The common good can never be adequately incarnated in any society when those waiting to be born can be legally killed at choice. If the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision that African Americans were other people’s property and somehow less than persons were still settled constitutional law, Mr. Obama would not be president of the…

We just finished a stewardship pitch at my parish, so this item struck me as particularly interesting and timely: a review of a new book on Christian giving — or lack thereof. Coming as it does during some difficult and uncertain economic times, it gives all of us something to wonder about and pray about:…

“They” being the very public preachers (one, a Catholic priest) who became suddenly very private after Barack Obama clinched the Democratic nomination. Have no fear. They’re still around — and speaking up. An Illinois paper has a roundup of the usual suspects, including Rev. Wright and Fr. Pfleger. (Rocco even has Pfleger’s Sunday sermon, which…

Periodically during this election cycle I’ve wondered: “Why on earth would anyone want to be President?” And now I’m wondering the same thing about the job of bishop. Once, it was a job with plentiful perks; but increasingly, it’s all about headaches, aggravation, deficits, lawsuits, conflict and criticism. And those are the good days. For…
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