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September 18, 2014
One of the 20th century’s most vocal Church antagonists is dead. The Rev. Ian Paisley died peacefully in Northern Ireland on Sept. 12, ending a life that for most of its 88 years was spent stoking division and inciting violence between Protestants and Catholics in his troubled homeland.
DUBLIN - Irish Cardinal Sean Brady has paid tribute to a controversial Protestant firebrand-turned-peacemaker who once heckled St. John Paul II as the “antichrist.”
Ten years ago, a friend took his then eight-year-old son to Buffalo to see their favourite football team, the St. Louis Rams, play the Bills. Both father and son are diehard Rams fans and the son wore a Rams jersey to the game.
VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis' international Council of Cardinals has begun creating the first draft of a new apostolic constitution that would implement a major reform of the Vatican bureaucracy.
I write this column a few days after Liberal leader Justin Trudeau spoke at a Catholic school in Cambridge, Ont. He was invited, welcomed, applauded and approved of. It was a political event held after school hours. Outside the school a group of protestors from Campaign Life Coalition argued that a politician who was so vehemently pro-abortion should not be given such approbation at a school ostensibly dedicated to Catholic teaching, one of the most fundamental moral precepts of which is the defence of unborn life.
One of the exciting aspects of Pope Francis’ pontificate is how he is making fresh the profound teaching of his predecessors. For example, the Holy Father insists that “missionary discipleship” is the Church’s fundamental identity and it forms the heart of his preaching. The Church exists to make disciples who are eager then to share their faith in Jesus with others. If the Church forgets this and turns inward, neglecting her missionary dimension, she becomes less of who she should be.
My husband and I fled Scotland during the run-up to the independence referendum and took refuge in the beautiful Italian seaside village of Santa Marinella. Santa Marinella is 40 minutes north-west of Rome, so we travelled into the capital daily to forget our political worries amid Rome’s cobble-stoned streets, lavish palaces, ancient churches and juicy gossip.
My youth had both its strengths and its weaknesses. I grew up on a farm in the heart of the Canadian prairies, a second-generation immigrant. Our family was a large one and the small farm we lived on gave us enough to live on, though just enough.
26th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A) Sept. 28 (Ezekiel 18:25-28; Psalm 25; Philippians 2:1-11; Matthew 21:28-32) No one is responsible for anything — we are all victims. If that sounds strange, that’s because it is — and yet it is one of the attitudes present in our culture. If we get in a scrape, the blame lies elsewhere — society, upbringing, personality disorders and genetics — but not with us. Even God is sometimes blamed, or accused of being unfair. God’s job is to give us a smooth, easy, and happy life and to respond to our demands.
OTTAWA - Canada faces potential violence unless a just solution is found to the plight of Canada’s aboriginal people, warned Winnipeg Archbishop-emeritus James Weisgerber.
BEAUPRÉ, QUE. - The mission of the Church in North American is to go “con-cretely to places on the periphery,” Cuban Cardinal Jaime Ortega told Canada’s bishops on Sept. 16.
HAMILTON, ONT. - Christine Beaumont was 16, pregnant and “a little rebellious” when she arrived at Hamilton’s St. Martin’s Manor in 1978.
VATICAN CITY - Today's bishops must be as vigilant and courageous as sentinels keeping watch over the faith, and as forgiving and patient as Moses, leading a sinning people across harsh deserts to God, Pope Francis said.
September 19, 2014
TORONTO - A new lecture series hopes to channel Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman and advance his efforts to combine faith and reason on campus.
With a guilty verdict on child-sex charges against former missionary priest Eric Dejaeger, Bishop Tony Krotki hopes the people of Igloolik in the diocese of Churchill-Hudson Bay will be able to continue healing with support from the Church and away from the media spotlight of a lurid, wrenching trial.
Dylan Robertson has gone from Youth Speak News reporter to homegrown terrorism investigator.
A recent study by the Council of Ontario Universities paints a rosy picture of post-graduate life. Within two years of graduating, 93 per cent of graduates are employed and the average salary for someone working full-time is just under $50,000.
MANCHESTER, England - The Catholic bishops of Scotland said they accept the results of referendum in which Scot voters rejected independence.
September 20, 2014
Catholic educators in Durham Region now have a guild to call their own.
I was chagrined, but not entirely surprised, when I read Woody Allen’s recent ruminations on ultimate things. To be blunt, he could not be any bleaker regarding the issue of meaning in the universe.