Features/Features

{mosimage}TORONTO - The September apocalypse on Wall Street and Bay Street is no surprise to religiously and socially motivated investors, who are now contemplating their place in the post-meltdown economy.

“Socially responsible investing is going to be very well positioned coming out of this crisis,” said Jantzi Social Index founder Michael Jantzi.

{mosimage}TORONTO - A pioneering $1-million program which has helped students correct their learning disabilities could soon fall under the budget axe at the Toronto Catholic District School Board, some parents with children in the program fear.

Evette and Clint Harder say they fear that the board will drop the Arrowsmith program at seven Toronto Catholic schools. Their eight-year-old daughter, Paige, is one of about 65 students enrolled in the program.

{mosimage}The church gives us four Sundays to get ready for the enfleshment of God. Four weeks is just enough to get organized for the office parties, gift exchanges, good cheer with good friends, family gatherings, etc. But it is impossible to be ready for God among us, God here and now, God in history — God as a concrete, physical reality. There is no strategy, no program, no scheme that will make such a thing easily acceptable or even understandable. Faith is a gift.

The nature of the gift is a clear sense of Christ and profound communion with reality.

{mosimage}TORONTO - The Notre Dame Cathedral parish in Ottawa may have 460 volunteers, young and old, but that doesn’t mean there is never a void to fill.

Alannah Lennon has been volunteering at the cathedral with her husband Stan for about 12 years now. As retirees, they find it’s easier to be involved in parish life, from attending daily Mass to helping out, because their time is more flexible.

PICKERING, Ont. - Surrounded by her classmates, nine-year-old Zeina Abu-Jurja recites some of her “environmental pet peeves.”

One pet peeve, she said, is when the television is on even if no one is watching because it’s an energy waster.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Embattled Toronto Catholic school trustees will remain with the board until their term ends in 2010, unless they are convicted of an indictable offence after a police investigation into trustee spending practices, says Ontario Education Minister Kathleen Wynne.

Alcohol, Internet gaming and personalized vehicle licence plates were some of the $30,000 worth of questionable expenses charged to taxpayers by Toronto Catholic District School Board trustees, according to a Nov. 12 audit report.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Science can't adequately explain the role of God in the universe, says Fr. George Coyne, S.J., the former director of the Vatican Observatory who, at one time, was referred to as “the pope's astrophysicist.”

But as a religious believer, the American professor said he is able to answer the question of God's role.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Alcoholic drinks, Internet gaming and personalized vehicle licence plates were some of the $30,000 worth of questionable expenses charged to taxpayers by Toronto Catholic District School Board trustees, according to a Nov. 12 audit report.

The report by Ernst & Young, which did not identify trustees by name, said $914,013 of the $943,783 in trustees' total expenses from Dec. 1, 2005, to May 28, 2008, were deemed eligible. Eligible expenses included Internet connection charges, office furniture, charitable donations and advertising expenses, the report said.

{mosimage}In 1952, Canadian and American culture collided over an unlikely cleric — Bishop Fulton Sheen. It was the dawn of the TV era and Sheen's Life is Worth Living had made him the most watched priest on television in the United States. But in Canada, for several years the CBC refused to broadcast the program. Find out why in this podcast of the Eighth Annual Somerville Lecture on Christianity and Culture.

This lecture was presented Nov. 6 at the Newman Centre, in the University of Toronto campus. It featured Dr. Mark McGowan, principal of the University of St. Michael's College, Toronto. He is well-known for his analysis of church affairs and as author of Waning of the Green: Catholics, the Irish and Identity in Toronto, and Michael Power: The Struggle to Build the Catholic Church on the Canadian Frontier.

The Somerville lecture is sponsored by The Catholic Register in co-operation with the St. Jerome's Lectures in Catholic Experience and the Newman Centre.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Theology students have an important role to play in a society that continues to advocate relativism, Professor Edward J. Monahan told graduating students from the University of St. Michael’s College at its Nov. 8 convocation.

Monahan  and two other professors — William J. Smyth and Janine Langan — were awarded with honorary doctorates, the Doctor of Sacred Letters.