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The Deacon's Bench

Antoinette Pacini prays during Sunday mass at the Galvez Hotel, which was headed by a priest from Sacred Heart Cathedral Galveston. Photo by Mayra Beltran, Houston Chronicle. Galveston was hit hard by Hurricane Ike, and some of the most severely damaged public places were houses of worship. But it takes more than wind and water…

I stumbled across this news story during my usual Google search this morning and thought: “They buried the lede.” A Mississippi chef who is also a deacon? That’s news! Take a look: Bill Vrazel gets a kick out of those high-strung television chefs who throw fits when things don’t go their way. But Vrazel, a…

“Television is to blame for exactly 57 percent of America’s civic ills. I could prove it if I had the space. Television came of age at a time when Americans were becoming more mobile geographically and spiritually. We moved around more and lived with family and lifetime confidantes less. We rejected tradition, inherited values and…

Economically, it seems like we have walked to the edge of the Grand Canyon and peered over and watched pebbles fall noiselessly to the bottom. And all we can do is clutch a nearby railing and feel the tug of vertigo and mouth a terrified: “Holy crap.” Or words to that effect. The inconvenient truth…

A reader mentioned in the comments that you can sing “Amazing Grace” to the tune of “House of the Rising Sun.” Well, I found what may be the definitive version of that, from the Blind Boys of Alabama. Give a listen and see what you think.

Conversion stories don’t come any more compelling or unusual than this one, about a tarot reader who became a Catholic priest: My earliest memories of the occult revolve around an near obsession with the TV shows “Bewitched” and “I Dream of Jeannie.” Nothing exactly dark and loathsome there. However, the idea that it was possible…

The morns are meeker than they were,The nuts are getting brown;The berry’s cheek is plumper,The rose is out of town.The maple wears a gayer scarf,The field a scarlet gown.Lest I should be old-fashioned,I’ll put a trinket on.— Emily Dickinson

Well, hearty congratulations to MCPF Stephen Colbert, for his victory tonight at the Emmy Awards. Stephen (and a few of his helper elves) won the award for Outstanding Writing For A Variety, Music Or Comedy Program. (Couldn’t those dunderheads at the Emmys tell that Stephen’s show is a News And Public Affairs program?) Also of…

These adorable kids come courtesy of Michael Paulson at Articles of Faith, who explains the story behind the picture. Photo by Suzanne Kreiter.

If you read nothing else on this late summer evening, read this heart-rending account of a father remembering his first son, and hearing the news that he would be born dead: On the drive home, we were mostly silent. As if exchanging telegrams, Lisa and I said what we needed to and no more. We…
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