Catholic Register Staff

Catholic Register Staff

October 12, 2007

We need more joy

{mosimage}In many of his homilies and speeches since coming to Toronto, Archbishop Thomas Collins has returned time and again to the theme of joy. It is an attribute implicit to being Christian, yet it is all too rare in practice.

October 5, 2007

What's a surplus?

{mosimage}Prime Minister Stephen Harper was in a rather indecent rush recently to turn the $14-billion federal surplus from last year into a $725-million tax cut for all Canadians. Granted, we’d all love an extra $30 or so to go shopping at the mall, but before we accept this as a fait accompli, shouldn’t we at least talk about it.

September 28, 2007

Our schools

{mosimage}In the middle of a highly emotional public debate over religious education, a new report has just been released by the Institute for Catholic Education on the current sense of how concerned Ontario Catholics feel about their publicly funded separate school system. The political context gives this report a necessary urgency.

September 24, 2007

The ideal family

{mosimage}Just as Canadians were waking up to discover that for the first time in history married couples were in the minority earlier this month, they were also reminded of what they had lost. The words came from Pope Benedict XVI, and they were the epitome of common sense.

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.