Catholic Register Staff
Readers Speak Out: May 1, 2022
First steps
Your March 22 editorial “Look to Rome” states your commitment to “reconciliation between Canada’s First Nations and its, shall we say, later arrivals.” Cheeky! But overlooking Indigenous beliefs that they always existed on the land, and that “settlers” were not simply later arrivals but a deceiving, destructive, endless throng that led to extreme social dislocation and loss of life, land and culture? Read Thomas King, Bob Joseph or Jesse Wente for detail.
Readers Speak Out: April 24, 2022
Pompous Peter
What is Peter Stockland afraid of? After reading his rather pompous and self-opinionated April 3 column, I was disappointed in his lack of knowledge and compassion.
I was baptized a Ukrainian Catholic. My wife and I were married in a Ukrainian Catholic Church in Kyiv, and our children were all baptized in this faith as well. Our church has a Patriarch (i.e., a separate hierarchy from Roman Catholics), but we recognize the spiritual supremacy of the Pope. In Ukraine, the Ukrainian Catholic Church follows the Julian calendar which means Easter will be celebrated next week.
Easter Drawing Contest 2022 winners
The great 19th-century Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky declared that beauty will save the world. Some years earlier, Our Lord anticipated — and no doubt inspired — Dostoyevsky by teaching us the necessity for salvation of experiencing the world and expressing our faith through the beauty in children’s eyes.
Readers Speak Out: April 17, 2022
Backlash whiplash
The meeting of Indigenous representatives with Pope Francis makes me reflect on the relationship of Church and State in Canada, their partnerships in the residential schools and in State funding of Catholic education. The media has made clear the responsibility of the Church regarding residential schools, but not so much that of the State. The Church is left holding the bag for many unfortunate things that transpired because of her role as the teacher of morality and spirituality.
Readers Speak Out: April 10, 2022
Listening hearts
I have never been more proud of the Catholic Church than when I heard Pope Francis’ response last week to our Indigenous community in Canada. It was not so much what he said, but an acknowledgement that he had listened.
Pope Francis: ‘I ask for God’s forgiveness’
Read the full text of Pope Francis' April 1 final audience with the Canadian Indigenous delegation that travelled to the Vatican.
Friars’ contest winner inspired on home front
Liya Lijoe Thottungal did not have to look far for her inspiration in penning the winning the entry for the annual Friars’ Student Writing Contest.
Readers Speak Out: April 3, 2022
Antidote to war
Re: War and the Cross (Editorial, March 13):
In the anti-war film Oh! What a Lovely War patriotic hymns are sung, and a pastor tells his congregation theirs is a righteous cause against a dastardly enemy. The scene then cuts to the other side and their pastor. It brilliantly clarifies the nature of war: a mass psychosis.