There is a truth about great journalists that long after their columns have faded into the ghosts of time, their words still come back to haunt or to comfort.
Way back in Grade 10 religion class at Michael Power High School, Sr. Virginia had us read Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. In this memorable book about the Holocaust, Frankl writes about why some of his fellow prisoners survived the concentration camps, while many didn’t.
In a few weeks, his many admirers will celebrate the 30th priestly anniversary of Fr. Paul Pearson of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri in Toronto.
Self-imposed silence
Re: Archdiocese gears up for federal election (Sept. 1):
The Church and the large Catholic community of Toronto has much to offer Canadians, especially, as the article suggests, by using the wisdom of Catholic social teaching in formulating government policies.
In the words of Pope Francis, to give the best of oneself in sports is also a call to aspire to holiness.
As someone who — thanks to his mother’s birth in Scotland and her emigration to Canada — enjoys both British and Canadian citizenship, never have I felt more of a “resident alien” living in the United States than when it comes to the issue of guns and the so-called right to bear arms which gets invoked after every atrocity, such as the Aug. 31 shootings that left seven dead in Odessa, Texas.
Is secularism good or bad?
Canadians of faith are struggling with that question these days. Our increasingly secularized world seems intent on removing religion from public life.
Recently I read a wonderful LinkedIn entry by Aron Laxton about the U.S. Navy’s efforts to study and reinforce aircraft based on planes that had been damaged from the front. Engineers studied and mapped the bullet holes that peppered the “wounded” planes and determined that additional armour needed to be added to the wingtips and to the central body of the aircraft.
Repentance
The Aug. 25 photograph of the return of the cross to Nagasaki Cathedral should be the first act of setting right the wrong of the bombing of Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945.
An old adage in development work is the dictum, “Give a person a fish, and you will feed her for one day; teach her how to fish, and you will feed her for a lifetime.”
When the Amazon suffers, the world suffers.