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January 2024

January 12

‘Something’s happening’ as young seek truth

January 12, 2024

When it comes to supporting Catholic education, the audience that came to hear Father Deacon Andrew Bennett’s fundraising talk for Catholic Pacific College was as committed as it gets.

Hope that passes happy-faced optimism

January 12, 2024

This new year has rolled in with a sense of helplessness in the face of major crises facing humanity. How do we have any realistic expectation of overcoming:

Resurrection doesn’t shuffle us into new bodies

January 12, 2024

In the recent flurry of jarring communiqués from the Vatican, a rather important instruction may have been missed by most. Within it, one key sentence may also have been overlooked. It’s the December instruction from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith on the proper handling of the ashes of the deceased following cremation of a baptized Catholic Christian.

God's Word on Sunday: God’s call goes out to all of us

January 12, 2024

Second Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B) Jan. 14 (1 Samuel 3:3b-10, 19; Psalm 40; 1 Corinthians 6:13c-15a, 17-20; John 1:35-42) The call of God comes to people in many different ways. Just as no two people are alike, no two calls are alike — each one is tailor-made to the individual. We might label Samuel’s prophetic call as the “voice in the middle of the night.” In gratitude for the gift of her child, Samuel’s mother Hannah had given him over to Eli to be raised and formed for service to God. This was long before the building of the permanent temple or the presence of Israelites in Jerusalem.

Seeking God’s Kingdom in Toronto

January 12, 2024

Archbishop Leo issues his inaugural pastoral letter.

Christian unity puts God’s love in action

January 12, 2024

This year’s Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, celebrated Jan. 18-25, will have the full participation of the Archdiocese of Toronto.

Mind the gap that doesn’t exist

January 12, 2024

Like the first baby born after midnight in the new year, the second day in 2024 marked the arrival of the first Globe and Mail editorial about child care.

Attending to the seeds of intention

January 12, 2024

Snow has finally starting falling in Saskatchewan, as January brings in a new year and its usual push for resolutions. At the same time, my social media feed is also full of gentle reminders that it is okay to just have made it through. I have been thinking about how these two extremes can be healthily connected at the heart of things. Just as snow falls gently over the ground, and fog wraps its way over the earth, it is a gently held intention that allows us to move peacefully through the season we are in.

And then there’s Maude’s abortion

January 12, 2024

Jesuit Father Patrick J. Sullivan and Robert Beusse were not intent on launching an early battle in the culture wars when they met with CBS President Robert Wood the Wednesday before Thanksgiving in 1972. They were simply out to prevent a summer rerun.

January 13

Church burnings said to be ‘understandable’

January 13, 2024

According to the Catholic Civil Rights League’s (CCRL) database, at least 85 Catholic churches have been set ablaze or vandalized since the unproven discovery on May 27, 2021, of 215 suspected unmarked graves near the former Kamloops Indian Residential School.

January 15

Bishop Rolando Álvarez released, exiled from Nicaragua after over 500 days of detention

January 15, 2024

Bishop Rolando Álvarez of Matagalpa has been released from prison and sent into exile along with 18 imprisoned churchmen as the Nicaraguan government expelled its most prominent critic, whose presence behind bars bore witness to the Sandinista regime descent into totalitarianism, along with its unrelenting persecution of the Catholic Church.

January 16

Win in Alberta for doctors’ conscience rights

January 16, 2024

Pro-life organizations are celebrating the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta’s (CPSA) decision not to impose an “effective referral” mandate that would have forced health practitioners to violate conscience rights to facilitate objectionable procedures like assisted suicide or abortion.

January 17

Notre Dame roof structure completed

January 17, 2024

In a historic year for Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, which the French capital and the whole world will see reopen Dec. 8, milestones will be reported on regularly, but this one made Parisians shed a tear or two: Reconstruction of the roof structure is now complete.

U.S. bishops identify liberty concerns

January 17, 2024

A new annual report by the U.S. bishops’ conference identifies five top threats to religious liberty in the United States, including a federal regulation it says could impose mandates on doctors to perform objectionable procedures and threats to the Church’s service to people who are migrants.

Database tracks persecution of Christians

January 17, 2024

Global Christian Relief (GCR) has launched a new searchable violent incidents database (VID) that chronicles all the violent attacks on Christians and people of faith around the world.

RCMP say Nova Scotia rectory fire ‘suspicious’

January 17, 2024

Meteghan RCMP have opened an arson investigation after deeming a rectory fire next to the former St. Bernard Church in Digby County, N.S., to be “suspicious in nature.”

Keys to 1914 and today: humanity, humility

January 17, 2024

Brooks, Alta., author Ben Galeski’s splendid new novel, The Good Heart, chronicles a young Canadian infantryman who turns to God and his inner strength to survive the hellish crucible of the First World War.

January 18

Armenians won’t accept loss of Artsakh

January 18, 2024

The 100,000 Armenians who fled en masse after Azerbaijan seized control of Nagorno-Karabakh — the enclave known to Armenians as Artsakh — last September are now facing a bitter winter as homeless refugees in Armenia.

Verbatim: Pope Francis' message for the World Day of the Sick

January 18, 2024

Pope Francis’ message for the World Day of the Sick to be marked on Feb. 11, 2024.

Editorial: On the side of real justice

January 18, 2024

It’s hardly The Catholic Register’s place to editorially sermonize our separated fellow Christians in the United Church about their theology.