Inspiration Faith & Prayer Health & Wellness Entertainment Love & Family
Newsletters Special Offers

The Deacon's Bench

Trolling around the ‘net, doing my usual morning reconaissance for Catholic news nuggets, I found this review of Barack Obama’s speech last night, from a Catholic priest: The Obama speech was tedious, verbose, unoriginal. I thought I was at Confirmation listening to the bishop’s sermon: destitute of any original thought whatsoever. Well, I wouldn’t go…

Deacons come from all walks of life, but here’s a new deacon with a particularly unusual resume, from Canada: For almost 40 years, Jean-Paul Tremblay investigated crime, first as a supervisor with the Sûreté du Québec in Low, Hull and Montreal, and then under contract at the former federal solicitor general’s department until he retired…

The video above has been making the rounds all day. It shows Catholic priests and pro-life demonstrators being arrested outside the Pepsi Center in Denver. The Denver Post describes what happened: Denver police arrested 13 anti-abortion protesters after they sat down in the street near an entrance to the Pepsi Center grounds early this afternoon.…

A reader generously sent me this link. Take a look.

While the casual observer — or even the casual Catholic — might think we are one-issue voters,it’s instructive to remember now and then that we aren’t. Joe Biden’s speech last night was a bracing reminder of that. My own father grew up in Biden’s corner of Pennsylvania, on a dirt road of rowhouses inhabited by…

A new study has some interesting answers. This comes from Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good. And the National Catholic Reporter this week has the details: A study of the effects of public policy on abortion rates during the past two decades shows that providing social and economic supports for women and family contributes…

I’ve searched in vain for any trace of Sister Catherine Pinkerton’s closing benediction last night at the Democratic National Convention, but no one seems to have it. Even the DNC website, which has all the speeches archived, hasn’t posted it. (When I realized CNN wasn’t going to carry it, I caught the last several seconds…

“Everybody needs a place to restEverybody wants to have a homeDont make no difference what nobody saysAint nobody like to be alone. Everybody’s got a hungry heart…” That was how Bruce Springsteen expressed something St. Augustine had understood 1600 years earlier: “Our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.” Today is the great saint’s…

It hasn’t been a very good week for Nancy Pelosi. Further proof: her theological arguments defending abortion are now the subject of a long critical piece by the Associated Press: Politics can be treacherous. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi walked on even riskier ground in a recent TV interview when she attempted a theological defense…

The mother of St. Augustine. We celebrate her feast today. The beautiful image above comes from St. Monica’s Church, in the Diocese of Trenton, from a study of the saint done by John Nava, who crafted the stunning tapestries of the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles. From the Liturgy of…
archives most recent
search this blog
More from Beliefnet and our partners