Michael Swan

Report sets stage for closer relations between Catholics, Anglicans

March 6, 2007

TORONTO - Church unity hasn’t happened yet, but Catholics and Anglicans have a new list of concrete suggestions for ways to bring the two churches closer.

Movie review: Black Snake Moan

February 25, 2007

Black Snake Moan takes a great starting point and turns it into a bad movie.

Toronto schools embrace EcoSchools program

February 23, 2007

ecoschool [images/stories/education/ecoschool.jpg]TORONTO - Anna Zappone stands less than four feet tall holding a beach-ball sized model of the Earth and its atmosphere. She’s no scientist, yet. But she’s figured out a thing or two about global climate change.

Movie review: A prisoner of his own mind

February 18, 2007

breach2 [images/stories/movies/breach2.jpg]The worst thing you can say about a religion is that it is a self-imposed prison of the mind — an identity of limits that deforms the human soul.

Safe Third Country Agreement under fire

February 18, 2007

cross_torture [images/stories/misc/cross_torture.jpg]TORONTO - A man known to the courts only as John Doe is sitting in a jail in Nebraska waiting for a decision from a Canadian judge. He’s a Colombian in the United States because the rebel FARC army has shot at his family and threatened his life, but he is barred from applying for asylum because he has been in the United States for more than a year.

Changes on the way for high school chaplains

February 16, 2007

TORONTO - As Ontario’s high school chaplains try to figure out a new name for their job that fits canon law, they’re also making a bid for some respect. And they’re starting to get it from the province’s bishops.

From Genesis to the Apocalypse

February 12, 2007

academyaward [images/stories/arts/academyaward.jpg]The most important information in the bookends of the Bible, Genesis and Apocalypse, is the stuff that tells us who we are. Identity is one of the most deeply religious questions we can ask.

Priestly presence diluted, but Basilians still on campus

February 12, 2007

TORONTO - When the Basilian Fathers let slip that they won’t be appointing any more of their men to positions at Saskatoon’s St. Thomas More College it was no great shock to anyone in the Catholic education community. You can’t appoint men who don’t exist.

Rights groups fight refugee deal

February 8, 2007

TORONTO - The United States human rights record and its war on terror are on trial in a Federal Court in Toronto. The Canadian Council of Churches, Amnesty International, the Canadian Council for Refugees and an anonymous Colombian in a Nebraska jail are trying to persuade a judge to suspend Canadian co-operation with the United States on handling of refugees.

Christians, Jews united

February 5, 2007

Toronto - Just a couple of weeks after announcing his retirement as archbishop of Toronto, Cardinal Aloysius Ambrozic confessed his love to a gathering of about 50 at Holy Blossom Temple.