Browse › 2021 › September
September 1, 2021
In light of the unmarked graves found at residential school sites across Canada this spring and summer, different groups have sought apologies and atonement from the Catholic Church for its contribution to residential schools.
The National Campus Life Network (NCLN)’s latest summer webinar “Better off Dead???” started raw and personal.
OTTAWA -- True and meaningful reconciliation with Indigenous Canadians, a “just” economic recovery from COVID, action to address climate change and a country that welcomes refugees and immigrants are among the issues that Catholic and faith-based organizations want Canada’s federal party leaders to address in debates before the Sept. 20 national election.
When the Russian dissident and author Alexander Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Soviet empire in 1974, he wrote a famous exhortation to his countrymen entitled “Live Not By Lies.” Solzhenitsyn spent years doing hard labour in prison camps, survived and dared to write about his experience in The Gulag Archipelago. Not only did he write his own story, but he gathered and recounted the tragic stories of those who didn’t make it out alive.
VATICAN CITY -- The chaotic withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan was due in part to a lack of foreseeing all possible eventualities, Pope Francis said in a new interview.
September 2, 2021
Canada’s commitment to take in 20,000 new Afghan refugees looks pretty generous compared to Great Britain’s (population 66 million) pledge to take in 20,000 over five years or the United States’ (population 328 million) promise to welcome 30,000. But what happens to them once they get here?
OTTAWA -- Faith groups that for years have warned that unless climate change is addressed the future enjoyment of God’s creation is bleak are encouraged the issue is at the forefront as Canadians get set to vote Sept. 20.
The images are still so fresh in our memories, the feelings still so easily recalled, that it is incredible to realize that 20 years have passed since the events of a day that will always be known as 9/11.
Ageless Mass Thanks so much to Charles Lewis for his wonderful column “A discouraging message on Latin Mass” (Aug. 1-8). My sentiment was “he took the words right out of my mouth.” And I know many folks that agree 100 per cent, including young people who have discovered the beauty and truth of the Mass of the ages. And yes, unfortunately Pope Francis is causing far more division than the Latin Mass ever could.
Pope Francis’ decision to tighten restrictions on the use of the Tridentine liturgy has been the most significant global Catholic news story of the summer.
September 3, 2021
It can be difficult, these days, not to become crabby, bitter and divisive. Every day, we receive so much that frightens or angers us, and seems to threaten our very being.
The doors have opened at the newest hospice in the Hamilton, Ont., area as the ribbon was cut on the new Margaret’s Place Hospice on the campus of St. Joseph’s Villa.
It has been nearly five years since Come From Away debuted and enraptured big-city theatre audiences with its musical depiction of how the people of Gander created a ray of light within the darkness of 9/11 for nearly 7,000 Americans forced to make an emergency landing in the remote Newfoundland town.
Newly elected Catholic Women’s League president Fran Lucas has a long list of hopes and dreams for Canada’s largest women’s organization, but the most immediate item on her wish list is “to come back to something as close as possible to the normal we once knew.”
WASHINGTON -- Former Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick pleaded not guilty Sept. 3 in a Massachusetts court, where he is facing three counts of sexually assaulting a teenager in the 1970s.
September 4, 2021
The revolution will not happen on TV, on Twitter or on TikTok. A transformed Church cannot be effected by a meme. So John Dorner isn’t watching his newsfeed, waiting for a revolution to hold the Church accountable for caring for creation. He is acting. He has reached that point in life where he can see the change that must outlive him.
“We didn’t have any houses destroyed.”
September 5, 2021
24th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Sept. 12 (Year B) Isaiah 50:5-9; Psalm 116; James 2:14-18; Mark 8:27-35 Insults, invective and torrents of verbal and psychological abuse have become frequent forms of communication in our time.
Outside of its military overtones, the word “legion” most often describes a large group of people with a singular mission.
Warm weather can bring out the best and the worst in the parishioners of the church on the street. It can lull them into a state of lassitude that can only be equalled by a homily that has lost sight of its destination, or else stir them into frenetic anger fuelled by an assortment of illicit stimulants.