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

The Deacon's Bench

Where is Shaggy when we need him? Scooby would feel right at home with this crowd. Enjoy. A cheeerful h/t to The Journeyman Carpenter.

It’s been a while since we heard any news about the “Catholic town” of Ave Maria in Florida. It’s been up and running for a little over a year now — and all indications are, it’s doing well, despite some setbacks and some less-than-enthusiastic press. This story comes from Naples News: Ambition has met reality…

Benedict’s predecessor was known for being “the people’s pope,” but this report from Sydney suggests someone else may now be able to claim that title: The shy professor of theology turned cardinal, chief inquisitor and keeper of the Catholic faith has shown the first glimpse of a mass communicator in the making – one whose…

It’s rare to find someone in the media talking candidly about their faith and spirituality. I was heartened, then, to discover this post about one of my CBS News colleagues, Kimberly Dozier: On Memorial Day 2006, CBS News correspondent Kimberly Dozier and her crew were on patrol with the military in Iraq. A car bomb…

Another group of women claims to now be validly ordained as priests — this time, in one of the most storied centers of American Catholicism, Boston. From the Globe: A group advocating for the ordination of women this afternoon held a ceremony in a packed Protestant church in Boston at which it declared three women…

Anyone interested in chants? Psalms? Sacred music? Step right up. A reader asked me to put in a plug for his websites on sacred music, so here (or hear) goes. Take a look — and a listen! — at Chabanel Responsorial Psalm Project and Quis Non Amantem I’m not an expert on these things (as…

A friend sent this picture my way, and it has to be one of the most beautiful renderings of the Blessed Mother I’ve seen. It’s Our Lady of the Southern Cross, patroness of World Youth Day 2008. She is also known as Help of Christians. (By happy coincidence, her feast day is my wedding anniversary,…

Last night, my wife and I finally went to see “WALL-E”; everybody else on the planet was going to see “The Dark Knight,” so it was easy to get tickets. Two hours later, I staggered out of the theater, wiping the tears from my cheeks. It just got me. My wife squeezed my hand. “It’s…

Out in Wyoming, a local paper just published this interesting look at the Church of the West (West of the Mississippi, that is) and how it’s preparing for the future: The three men in black sat together on what traditionally has been their only “day off.” Days off are rare now, but it’s all part…

Last weekend, you may have seen this item in the New York Times: there are doubts being raised about who really wrote the Serenity Prayer. Most of us know it by heart: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot changeThe courage to change the things I canAnd the wisdom to know…
archives most recent
search this blog
More from Beliefnet and our partners