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The Deacon's Bench

Computer geeks — or even just ordinary PC users, which seems to be everyone these days — can lower the flag to half-staff and have a moment of silence for that beloved icon of an age: the mouse. The obit is here: It’s nearly 40 years old but one leading research company says the days…

Pope Benedict, clearly getting into the Australian swing of things, as he begins World Youth Day. You can read the texts of his addresses right here. H/T to Rocco.

Actually, you can read those thousand words right here. This is a shot from my in-laws’ 50th anniversary celebration. I’m the one on the left. The fellow on the right is the celebrant, Msgr. Vincent Gatto, 82-years-young and a true gentleman.

Here’s an interesting sidebar on the World Youth Day activities: it seems more and more young people are gravitating to booths promoting religious vocations. (In the interest of full disclosure, I have to say that I provided some material for a presentation on the permanent diaconate; a deacon in Australia dropped me an e-mail and…

No big rallies. No papal homilies. No singing nuns. Just some really cool semiautomatic weapons. Or so it seems, judging from this item out of Oklahoma: An Oklahoma baptist church has insisted it will proceed with its controversial plan to give away an AR-15 semiautomatic assault rifle during a youth conference – a move described…

Not every Catholic in Australia is thrilled about World Youth Day — and one leading critic is taking the time to make sure the press knows about his displeasure: A group of Catholic priests opposed to church modernisation has condemned World Youth Day as an appalling display of secularism with little holy or Catholic content.…

Now seems a good time to take a second look at something Tony Snow wrote last year, for Christianity Today. It speaks in many ways, about many things. But the title says it all: “Cancer’s Unexpected Blessings”: Blessings arrive in unexpected packages—in my case, cancer. Those of us with potentially fatal diseases—and there are millions…

The Book of the Gospels is carried at the opening Mass of World Youth Day in Sydney, Australia, July 15. Sydney Cardinal George Pell celebrated the Mass before an estimated 140,000 people. ( Photo by: Paul Haring, Catholic News Service

That shrewd observer of the Anglican scene, Damien Thompson, has posted some thoughts on what a sudden influx of Anglicans might mean for the Catholic Church — and how it might happen: The really good news, from the Catholic point of view, is that Rome and the two flying bishops seem to have agreed on…

Duty demands that I once again post a picture of Anne Hathaway. It seems her ex-boyfriend was not only involved in some shady dealings with the Vatican. He also bought the beach home of a bishop. My paper of record, the New York Post, has details: A New Jersey bishop who spent five years in…
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