There is a similar scene in many movies. It is a cliché but one most of us enjoy: the skinny kid, representing good, enters the ring with the brutish bully, representing evil. Think The Karate Kid and the like.

Faith and food are two of the best parts of my life. So when I stumbled across a cookbook that brought these life-giving elements together, I was hooked.

I always look forward to the spring. It is when our university celebrates convocation, and while this is usually an all-consuming, logistically complex event, come the day this is feel-good all the way. 

The overwhelming election victory of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party has heightened fears among members of the nation’s minority religions, including Christians. Yet Christians in the Western world might well learn some lessons, both positive and negative, from Modi’s politics of Hindu nationalism.

Throughout the Bible, much is said about money. From “the love of money is the root of all evil” to “give Caesar what belongs to Caesar” to “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

Do you remember a pop song called “The Power of Love,” from a popular movie called Back to the Future? Fun, lively and danceable, the song is just what it ought to be for its purpose: “With a little help from above, you feel the power of love.” 

Contrary to what most of my professors believed, I sometimes paid attention when I was in the diaconate formation program at St. Augustine’s Seminary. Liturgically I may not have known my ambo from my elbow, but when it came to pastoral care I was totally present.

In 2007 I started a new assignment as the National Post’s religion reporter and editor. It was at a time I was digging deeper into Christianity so I thought it would be a perfect fit for me. 

Joy is an Easter feeling and a virtue in my faith tradition. For reasons fairly obvious to me, it is not the leading line in any description anyone would ever write about me. 

Less than a month after Pope Francis warned about the perils of misinformation and “fake news,” new research unearths some rather disturbing findings about the issue in Canada.