If you want to find a cipher for society’s attitude toward the Roman Catholic priest, look to the priest figure in fiction and popular culture.

All those letter-writing campaigns and petitions do occasionally hit their mark. Recent evidence can be found in the growing tide of opinion against the current mega-fashion of buying bottled water.

{mosimage}The recent visit to Canada of the archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, to meet with the Anglican bishops across the country was an effort to counsel the bishops on preserving the unity of the communion.

Is the current challenge to Ontario’s publicly funded Catholic education system a tempest in a teapot? Perhaps, or perhaps not. Regardless, there is never a time when Catholics can be complacent about their cherished separate schools in Ontario, or anywhere in the country.

St. Paul’s splendid image of the church as the Body of Christ reminds us that all Christians suffer when even the smallest part of the Body is injured. It is this New Testament insight into the nature of the church that explains, at least in part, the pain and concern felt among Christians everywhere about our persecuted Christian brothers and sisters in Turkey.

Mother’s Day is upon us once again (May 13) and we husbands and fathers need to rev up the creative juices to identify that unique gift for our special ladies.

I started my career as an economist 20 years ago trying to improve reintegration and vocational training for workers who had been injured on the job. Our work was mostly shelved.

I wasn’t there for Berkeley Brean’s funeral. In fact, I hadn’t seen him in decades. I heard he married but I never met his wife, or their sons. I did not know, until I got his obituary, that he endured cancer for three years before he died on Nov. 4, 2006.

Children are the latest hot marketing tool, used not just to sell sugar-coated cereal to Mom, but also to pry open wallets by appeals to the heart from a wide assortment of public lobby groups.

When someone you know has been diagnosed with a serious illness, you may want to reach out to him or her but feel unsure of what to say or do. This uncertainty can keep you away at the time when your help is needed most. The following are some ways to show you care.