Catholic Register Staff

Catholic Register Staff

September 18, 2007

Religion and Politics

{mosimage}Clashes between religion and politics are breaking out all over these days. Those predictions a generation ago that religion would die quietly in a new enlightened secular age appear to be the only thing to have passed to the Great Beyond. Religion is hale and hearty by comparison, though it is appearing in situations that are causing people of faith to squirm.

September 10, 2007

Shopping blues

{mosimage}Complaining about Sunday shopping might seem the epitome of flogging a dead horse. But in Nova Scotia, the horse has not been long dead and, as the good people of that fair province have discovered, the corpse is still twitching. So let’s flog away.

February 21, 2008

We all need prayers

{mosimage}It’s actually kind of surprising that the Ontario legislature’s practice of starting off the day with the Lord’s Prayer had escaped notice for so long. Most legislatures in Canada changed the custom some years back, adopting non-sectarian prayers, or moments of reflection, or something similar to reflect Canada’s evolving religious diversity.

February 15, 2008

Wrong solution

{mosimage}Until Liberal MP Keith Martin tabled a private members’ motion in the House of Commons on Jan. 30, the problem of human rights commissions dabbling in censorship of free speech had really not hit the political radar screens. Now, however, the politicians have been forced to take note and, predictably, they wonder what the fuss is all about.

February 8, 2008

Spiritual battle

{mosimage}In his 2008 Message for Lent, Pope Benedict XVI refers to the “spiritual battle” of the Lenten season, a time when we use the tools of almsgiving, fasting and prayer to strengthen our inner selves against those forces, internal and external, which prey on our human foibles.

February 1, 2008

'I'm not listening'

{mosimage}Canada recently “celebrated” — “mourned” would be more appropriate if not, unfortunately, accurate — the 20th anniversary of the Morgentaler decision by the Supreme Court of Canada, which demolished our laws restricting abortion. Away from the main events of public marches, protests and university symposia, there were several sideshows that revealed how threatened mainstream opinion makers are by the fact that the subject refuses to die.

{mosimage}This year's theme for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity (Jan. 20-26) uses Paul's words “Pray without ceasing” from his letter to the Thessalonians (5:13b-18). This is sage advice, not only in the cause of Christian unity, but for life in general.

January 10, 2008

It will cost us

{mosimage}The report released Jan. 8 by the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy is no more or less gloomy than the many other reports being issued these days by organizations given the task of assessing how real the crisis over greenhouse gases actually is and what should be done about it. Unfortunately, few political parties in Canada, with the possible exception of the tiny Green Party, appear ready to really grasp the nettle.

January 3, 2008

Muzzling religion

{mosimage}Outside a small circle of socially conservative Catholics, few people have heard of Catholic Insight magazine. Yet all of us — Catholic, non-Catholic, religious and nonreligious — should be concerned about its fate as it faces a complaint before the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

December 21, 2007

Living together

{mosimage}The Bouchard-Taylor Commission, now finishing up its work on reasonable accommodation in Quebec, is only the most significant example of the struggle we have in Canada of finding ways to live together with growing ethnic, religious and cultural differences. There have been many others. And this will only intensify as the country continues to evolve thanks to growing immigration.