Michael Swan

Interfaith marriage a threat to the faith?

December 1, 2006

Is marriage becoming a threat to religion? As more Canadians marry outside of their faith, religious leaders are starting to worry about how the children of interfaith marriages will ever gain a religious identity.

Liturgists to meet in Toronto

November 30, 2006

TORONTO - If good liturgy doesn't happen by accident, it must surely have something to do with the work of the North American Academy of Liturgy. The first week of January, the academy will bring about 250 scholars to Toronto in its continuing crusade to make sure accidents don't happen.

End to housing funds will harm needy

November 30, 2006

TORONTO - Canada's shelter allowance runs out March 31, and the Catholic agencies that deal with Toronto's homeless population warn that when that happens more and more people will fall through the cracks.

Canadian surplus should help families

November 30, 2006

TORONTO - Failure to reduce Canada's 17-per-cent child poverty rate over the past five years is creating a deficit that can't be erased by paying down government debt, say the authors of Campaign 2000's 2006 Report Card on Child and Family Poverty.

Franciscan way goes mainstream

November 24, 2006

The Christmas Creche [images/stories/misc/CrecheHand.jpg]TORONTO - Following St. Francis into Advent starts with a concrete, physical, tangible, searingly real sense of the incarnation, according to Toronto-area Franciscans who will spend the four weeks leading up to Christmas doing things most Catholics do — preparing a Christmas crèche, attending Advent liturgies, singing carols and getting ready for the Feast of the Nativity.

Catholic tradition supports access to universal health care

November 24, 2006

Dr. Bridget Campion [images/stories/toronto_people/Campion.jpg]TORONTO - The seemingly endless debate about private versus public health care in Canada naturally lends itself to a Catholic take, bioethicist Bridget Campion told a small audience at the end of an evening in which the Canadian Catholic Bioethics Institute split the podium between pro-medicare family doctor Claudette Chase and pro-private sector economist John Kyle.

Poverty affects health, studies show

November 24, 2006

Dr. Penny Sutcliffe [images/stories/toronto_people/sutcliffe.jpg]TORONTO - Poverty kills just as surely as smoking or living off burgers, fries and ice cream, and the church leaders who run Ontario's food banks, emergency shelters and family counselling programs are prepared to back that claim up with science.

Ethical investors want government to clean up environment act

November 24, 2006

The companies that sell ethically screened mutual funds are asking Parliament to clean up the Clean Air Act.

A note of joy among AIDS sufferers

November 24, 2006

Fr.Gilles Mongeau. S.J. [images/stories/presentClergy/Fr.Gilles-Mongeau.jpg]TORONTO - When Our Lady of Lourdes parish marks World AIDS Day Dec. 1, those who have gathered for the monthly healing Mass the past 16 years will remember the ones who have died and their families and friends, not forgetting those who still depend on a handful of pills every day to keep the human immunodeficiency virus at bay.

Looking to Scriptures for answers to the Korean nuclear crisis

November 20, 2006

The Israelites of biblical times could never have predicted that a couple thousand years down the road nations would face off against each other with weapons that could kill hundreds of thousands all at once. But they did know about arms races, and they knew about the relationship of small nations with great empires.