Michael Swan

Catholic college headed Peterborough's Trent University

March 19, 2010

Catholic higher education is about to establish a new outpost in Peterborough. Peterborough Bishop Nicola DeAngelis has collected $1.6 million in donations and entered into talks with Trent University in hopes of offering university level liberal arts courses at Sacred Heart parish in downtown Peterborough. The first non-credit courses at Sacred Heart College could be up and running as soon as this September.

Repo Men shows how capitalism is a part of us

March 19, 2010

A certain kind of reviewer, many of them working for the religious press, is going to object to Repo Men because of all the blood and swearing. As if morality consisted of a list of banned words and bodily fluids. Catholics know morality has nothing to do with purity codes or legalisms. When legalists (sometimes Pharisees and sometimes Scribes) confronted Jesus over purity issues (ceremonial washing before meals), His response was derisive.

Rich, educated not necessarily less active in religion

March 19, 2010

TORONTO - A good education and a good job are no barrier to believing in a personal God, according to a University of Toronto sociologist. But the American-born professor also warns that a close association between conservative, reactionary politics and religion is driving better educated Americans away from church, what Scott Schieman calls “the Sarah Palin effect.”

Iraqi Christians still can't go home

March 19, 2010

Elections in Iraq that some claim have opened the way for a more peaceful and democratic state haven’t overcome the divisions or the sectarian violence that is generating hundreds of thousands of refugees, said an Iraqi Dominican Sister. Sr. Aman Miriam of Mosul, Iraq — currently staying with the Adrian Dominican community in Michigan — told The Catholic Register days after 62 per cent of eligible Iraqis voted in national elections March 7 that the thousands of Iraqi Christians living in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria can’t return home and fear terrorist attacks and kidnapping if they do return.

Archangel Michael icon donated to archdiocese of Toronto

March 18, 2010

TORONTO - A window on the Kingdom of God now hangs in the chapel at the archdiocese of Toronto’s Catholic Pastoral Centre. Icon painter Janusz Charczuk donated the painting of the archangel Michael to the archdiocese. The icon of the patron saint of the archdiocese of Toronto took three months to paint using traditional materials and techniques, including a base of 16 layers of gesso made from marble dust, and hand-mixed colours in egg tempura.

Canada's Christian numbers projected to fall over next two decades

March 12, 2010

In the next 20 years Canada is expected to be less Christian, and a little less religious. According to Statistics Canada, the most dramatic change in Canada’s religious landscape will be an increase in the number of Muslims. Muslims currently make up 35 per cent of all non-Christians. By 2031 they will be half of the non-Christian population.

Ontario education plans don't take into account what Catholic colleges do best

March 12, 2010

A government that pins its economic recovery plans on sending more kids to colleges and universities is probably good news for Ontario's Catholic liberal arts colleges, but college administrators are worried about whether the government sees the value of philosophy, literary studies and history. Ontario's Liberal government made post-secondary education the centrepiece of its March 8 throne speech, promising to increase the post-secondary education participation to 70 per cent, from a current 62 per cent, to create 20,000 new spaces at colleges and universities this year and to boost international students by 50 per cent over five years.

Artist Galina Oussatchevafaith enlightened through iconography

March 5, 2010

TORONTO - There’s an art to looking at eternity, but figuring that out wasn’t easy for 29-year-old Russian-Canadian iconographer Galina Oussatcheva. Oussatcheva grew up in communist and post-communist Moscow at a time when Russian society was still phobic about religion and as secularized and post-Christian as any capital in Western Europe. She first saw Russian icon painting when she was 10 years old, on a class trip to the Cathedral of the Dormition of Mary in the Kremlin.

The evolution of Robin Hood

February 26, 2010

Hodd by Adam Thorpe (Random House UK, 320 pages, $34). The Robin Hood most of us grew up with was a perfect hero for bookish kids. He was cheerful, generous and just. He surrounded himself with merry men, had a loyal, clever, cute girlfriend and together they robbed from the rich and gave to the poor. If we thought about it later, we might have regarded the Robin Hood of childhood books, movies and cartoons as a gentleman who had taken sides in the class struggle.

The ugly truth of Canada's First Nations teen suicide

February 19, 2010

Stretched thinner and thinner across Canada’s North, the church is losing touch with First Nations communities as First Nations communities lose touch with hope. Another wave of teen suicides in the James Bay region has left church leaders wondering how they can offer hope to young aboriginals when they have so little contact with them. “It used to be that the churches had a real big involvement in the communities,” said Bishop Vincent Cadieux, bishop of the Moosonee and Hearst dioceses. “That’s less and less now.”