Arts

TORONTO - Cardinal Thomas Collins is joining thousands who want Vision TV to remain on basic cable so that its religious programming continues to be available to the widest possible audience.

The Work of Mercy: Being the Hands and Heart of Christ by Mark P. Shea (Servant Books, an imprint of St. Anthony Messenger Press, 144 pages, $14.99).

American Catholic author Mark P. Shea delves into the topic of spiritual and corporal works of mercy without presenting new theology. Instead, his book offers a modern, and refreshing, update.

“He looked right at me.”

Those words, expressed with both reverence and excitement, came from the mouths of almost every member of the Our Lady of Sorrows Ecumenical Choir, just after having been blessed by Pope Benedict XVI at the Papal Mass for the Presentation of Our Lord at St. Peter’s Basilica — certainly, given his resignation announced Feb. 11, one of his last celebrations as our Holy Father.

Most people are still seeking their life’s purpose, Fr. Frank Freitas believes.

TORONTO - In his new play, The De Chardin Project, actor and writer Adam Seybold draws a line in the sand — or rather two lines in sand — on the stage floor. Playing the pioneering 20th-century scientist theologian and Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Seybold dramatically lays down the central fact of de Chardin's life: the cross.

Salvadorans remember Romero like it was yesterday

On Christmas day a film adaptation of Victor Hugo’s book Les Miserables made its debut in theatres. Though Hugo had a less than perfectly benign view of the Catholic Church, his masterpiece is, from beginning to end, conditioned by a profoundly Christian worldview. It is most important that, amidst all of the “Les Miz” hoopla, the spiritual heart of Hugo’s narrative not be lost.

In time for the 450th anniversary of the closing of the Council of Trent, eminent Jesuit historian Fr. John W. O’Malley has written this concise and readable account of the council that determined the features of modern Roman Catholicism.

TORONTO - Each year, across the Toronto Catholic District School Board, Grade 2 boys take part in a yearly ritual, as adjudicators from St. Michael's Choir School visit their classrooms and listen carefully to the small, unformed voices that may one day make up the ranks of one of the finest music schools in the world.

Imagine crawling to the bathroom 15 times a day with painful rectal cramping, bloody diarrhea and in searing pain from swollen joints. Then, when you make it to the hospital’s emergency room, you’re finally rolled into, wait for it… a psychiatric ward storage room.