The problem with The Jesus Discovery is that it’s not really about the archeology. It’s about making a documentary movie.

Simcha Jacobovici’s documentary, to be aired in Canada on VisionTV, presents us with a dramatic plot full of twists and turns. Jacobovici turns in a fine performance as the stalwart and stoic hero who patiently overcomes each obstacle on his quest to make a movie. Tight editing and subtle use of music add to the tension.

The story of how the movie got made reveals a great deal about contemporary Israeli society and contemporary American media culture. We’re treated to CNN talking heads sputtering outrage over any information that might challenge their settled world view. We watch as ultra-orthodox Jews in Jerusalem impose their will on the film crew by leveraging mob rule.

Brazil is now the world’s sixth largest economy and economists project it will be the fifth largest by the end of this year. It has an advanced aerospace industry, some of the most sophisticated telecommunications companies in the world and more billionaires than Japan. It also has slaves.

Between 25,000 and 40,000 Brazilians every year are trafficked into slavery. On average, government anti-slavery teams free 4,500 people per year.

“When I went to Brazil for the first time (in the 1990s) I was far from imagining that slavery was still existing,” said French-born Dominican Brother Xavier Plassat. “For me it was a discovery.”

Legalizing prostitution won’t make women safer, a sex-trade survivor told about 200 women and 20 men at a one-day conference on human trafficking.

Just two days before the Ontario Court of Appeal released a ruling that legalized brothels while maintaining laws against pimping in the Criminal Code, Bridget Perrier told conference delegates the myth of prostitution as a choice must be challenged. The March 24 conference was organized by themy Loretto Sisters.

“We always hear that prostitution is the world’s oldest profession. I always say it’s the world’s oldest oppression,” Perrier said. “Really, it’s paid rape. It’s child abuse.”

You may be blessed, but Ontario’s Ministry of Transportation wants nothing to do with it. The provincial government won’t allow drivers to be randomly blessed on Ontario highways and byways.

Patty McConnell thought she had a simple, uplifting message staked out for a vanity licence plate for her car. She was willing to pay $250 to have URBLEST above her back bumper.

The ServiceOntario products and services office said, oh no you don’t.

The NDP wants to grant Ontario Catholic high school students the right to name their anti-bullying clubs a Gay Straight Alliance.

The province’s anti-bullying legislation, Bill 13, received second reading at Queen’s Park on March 26. Before the debate, the NDP education critic said his party wants to resolve the controversy over whether Catholic schools can call their clubs Gay Straight Alliances by letting students decide.

“What we’re considering as an amendment is giving students determination over the name of the committee that takes that up,” said NDP MPP for Danforth-Greenwood Peter Tabuns.

There's no such thing as democracy or pluralism without religious voices as far as Cardinal Thomas Collins is concerned.

"The voice of faith is not going to retreat into the world of private devotion," Collins told members of The Canadian Club of Toronto in a March 28 address. "So we need to be able to listen to each other attentively and to engage humbly and courteously in the democratic conversation, with mutual respect, for the benefit of all."

Under the title "Faith and Secularism in the Public Square," Collins tackled the problem of how Christians and all people of faith can participate in democratic, pluralistic societies that claim to be secular.

Biologically speaking, we can sustain life without art, but it wouldn’t be a very human life. L’Arche is all about sustaining and celebrating a fully human life, which makes the April art exhibition at the Richmond Hill Centre for the Performing Arts so important, said Colette Halferty.

Halferty is part of the team at L’Arche Daybreak putting on With Our Own Hands, an art exhibition featuring the work of L’Arche core members and other artists who participate in L’Arche day programs.

Canada’s bishops are asking the government to explain a 68 per cent cut in CIDA funding to Development and Peace, but development experts and opposition politicians are offering explanations the bishops are unlikely to hear from the government.

University of Toronto development expert Wilson Pritchart says domestic politics is lurking behind CIDA funding decisions.

“What the government in fact is doing is cutting funding to organizations that are critical of it, that are critical of the aid agenda,” Pritchart told The Catholic Register. “And to some extent cutting funding to NGOs that are at all political in favour of using NGOs as conduits for service delivery.”

Now that Ontario’s highest court has found most laws surrounding prostitution in Canada are unconstitutional, people on all sides of the debate are urging Parliament to act.

In a landmark ruling likely to be appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada, the Ontario Court of Appeal rendered a decision on March 26 that legalizes brothels and allows prostitutes to hire protection and other staff.  Public solicitation and pimping remain illegal but the court ruled that prostitutes have a constitutional right to work in safe environments.

However, the Ontario court suspended implementation of its decision for one year to give Parliament time to amend the criminal code.

TORONTO - Canada is not a secular state. It is ruled by "econo-theism," Green Party leader Elizabeth May told a March 25 interfaith conference in Toronto.

“We worship the economy,” May told delegates to the Green Choices for Faith Communities conference at the Noor Cultural Centre.

The conference organized by Greening Sacred Spaces and the Green Awakening Network included presentations on political activism for churches, spirituality, solar power for Churches and modern lighting systems to cut energy use.