Glen Argan

Farley Magee was the musical leader for years at the Sunday services of Inner City Pastoral Ministry (ICPM), the ecumenical group that serves the beautiful and broken people who populate downtown Edmonton.

Remi De Roo named a bishop just as the Second Vatican Council opened in October 1962. He was 38 years old, the youngest bishop in the world. De Roo attended all four sessions of Vatican II, and the experience changed him for life. He gained a new understanding of the Church, one more inclusive than the hierarchical model he had learned in the seminary.

The liturgical calendar turns briefly in late September and early October to the role of angels in salvation. First, there is the Sept. 29 feast of the messengers Gabriel, Raphael and Michael – not celebrated this year because the feast falls on a Sunday – and then the Oct. 2 memorial of guardian angels.

Perhaps nowhere in society is the loss of the sacred more evident than in marriage and in the wedding ceremonies which solemnify a marriage.

My father was a frugal man who categorically rejected going into debt. He warned me against this way of life more than I can recall. When he and my mother bought their modest home in Regina in 1954, they paid cash. Dad bought used cars, again always paying up front.

Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church is espousing heresy. His views are heretical because he has enlisted God in a campaign of violence, declaring that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a holy war.

The Vatican’s April 8 statement Dignitatis Infinita (Infinite Dignity) provides a welcome examination of the concept of human dignity, distinguishing proper understanding of the term from current misconceptions.