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Being prepared for genetic advice

{mosimage}Sometimes an observation leads to that rude “duh” of quick retort. But sometimes on a second or third thinking you realize that knee-jerk cynicism is simply insufficient, simplistic.

Caregiver's role is very gratifying

One in five baby boomers and seniors provides care to an older adult, according to Statistics Canada. (In my experience, this figure is quite conservative.) The majority are in the 45 to 54 age group, giving practical help to a parent.

Faith-based schools debate? Stork dancing

{mosimage}The debate about the public funding of faith-based schools in the Ontario election campaign could be described as “stork dancing.”  There was no engagement and no contact.  No honest exchange, just a bashing of hard beaks.  And the blame was evenly spread.

Faith and education can mix

{mosimage}Editor’s note: This article offers a perspective on faith-based education from outside Ontario. It is written by Lee Giles, an editor for the Red Deer Advocate, a daily newspaper in Red Deer, Alta. It is reprinted with permission.

If someone asked you to name the Canadian province most likely to embrace religious diversity, you just might choose Ontario. After all, is there anywhere in the country where you could find a greater number of faiths represented than in Toronto? Not likely.

Whose children are they?

Ontario’s hot-button issue of faith-based schools is not solely one of public vs. private education, or of religious rights vs. the secularity of the state, but rather of the right of parents to educate their own children.

Education debate feared, welcomed

And so the Ontario election is over. The Grits are returned with a majority. The Tories are licking their wounds. The NDP and Green Party observe largely from the margins.  And, of course, the issue of faith-based schools — John Tory’s killer decision — remains for another day of reckoning.

The nature of Catholic education

{mosimage}There has been in recent weeks much focus and discussion on Ontario’s strong publicly funded school system. Catholic schools are an integral part of that system, supported by 2.4 million Catholic ratepayers and the province’s three major political parties.


Our common front: end homelessness

{mosimage} Prior to the 2006 federal election, Faith Today, the magazine of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, published the response of Prime Minister Stephen Harper to a question it had put to him: “What role do you think faith should play in developing public policy, and what is the place of religious institutions in contemporary Canadian society?”

Musical abuse

{mosimage}The people in the pews are the Body of Christ, and never am I more aware of this than when I am in my parish in Cambridge, Mass. The priest censes the altar. The altar server censes the boys’ choir. He then stands before the People of God and bows his head. We bow our heads. He censes us for, like the altar and the boys’ choir, we are holy. He bows again. We bow again. There is a tremendous dignity in all this — unless, of course, you are allergic to incense and sneeze.

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John Main, an ordinary spiritual teacher

{mosimage}The 25th anniversary of the life and death of Benedictine monk John Main (1926-1982) will be celebrated at the John Main Seminar in Orford, Que., Oct. 18-21. It will bring together more than 200 speakers, teachers of spirituality, meditators and the general public from around the world to join in a three-day colloquium on the influence of this extraordinary spiritual teacher and prophet.

Notes from Newfoundland

{mosimage}Forty-six per cent of Newfoundlanders are left-handed. At least that’s what my husband’s golfing partner told him while they played the Terra Nova course.