The other day, I lost my so-called smartphone. It was kind of dumb of me. But the episode set off a range of emotions; from the pit-in-my-stomach initial feeling to panic and stress at figuring out what to do next, including a little prayer to St. Anthony, to contentment realizing life without that digital albatross around my neck actually feels pretty good.

NEW YORK - Fifth Avenue is the world’s main street, a gentle stroll taking you from the Empire State Building at 34th Street to the New York public library at 42nd Street, or from FAO Schwartz, the toy store for all ages, at 59th Street, to the magnificent Frick Gallery at 71st Street. Then there is the Queen of Fifth Avenue, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, which Cardinal Timothy Dolan likes to call “America’s parish church.”

During a mid-1970s election campaign in Great Britain, William Whitelaw, the Conservative opposition leader, famously accused Harold Wilson, then Labour prime minister, of going round the country stirring up apathy. 

Last Sunday, on the anniversary of the final apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Fatima, the Holy Father consecrated the entire world to her Immaculate Heart, in the presence of the original statue of Our Lady of Fatima, brought to Rome from the Portuguese shrine.

At a recent conference in Montreal on religious freedom and education, the principal of Loyola High School pinpointed the threat facing people of faith.

One of the capital sins recognized in the medieval Church was acedie (or accidie, the older spelling) which the Catechism misleadingly equates with sloth. Actually, acedie is worse than sloth. The Oxford dictionary defines sloth as “laziness or indolence” but defines acedie as “spiritual torpor” or “black despair.”

Canadians can’t stop talking about the appropriateness of allowing the weakest and sickest members of society to be killed.

One of the capital sins recognized in the medieval Church was acedie (or accidie, the older spelling) which the Catechism misleadingly equates with sloth. Actually, acedie is worse than sloth. The Oxford dictionary defines sloth as “laziness or indolence” but defines acedie as “spiritual torpor” or “black despair.”

Are you ever pestered by annoying telemarketers trying to sell you things you don’t want? Have you registered your phone numbers on the Do Not Call List and still the calls keep coming?

QUEBEC CITY - Last week the National Assembly here was the scene of a rather unlovely protest, with topless women of a feminist bent protesting the presence of the crucifix over the Speaker’s chair in the chamber. Stripping off in the presence of the province’s first female premier, the protesters had written their slogans on their naked torsos, loosely translated as “heritage belongs in a museum.” The reference was to the Parti Québécois position that the crucifix will remain in the National Assembly, even while “conspicuous” religious symbols are banned from the public sector under the proposed “Charter of Quebec Values.” The crucifix is not a religious symbol, the government maintains, but a manifestation of Quebec’s “cultural heritage.”